In the mood to see a one-of-a-kind, truly breathtaking documentary?
“Born To Fly,” Catherine Gund’s thrilling documentary about Extreme Action Artist Elizabeth Streb and her team of Action Heroes, captures dynamic dancing in its most extreme and exhilarating mode.
Elizabeth Streb and the STREB Extreme Action Company, a jaw-dropping, fearless troupe of flyers and crashers, is motivated by Streb’s motto that “anything too safe is not action.”
In the course of this feature, these daredevils challenge the assumptions of art, aging, injury, gender, and above all, the notions of human range and possibility.
It traces the evolution of Streb’s movement philosophy as she pushes herself and her performers from the ground to the sky. Revealing the passions behind the dancers’ bruises and broken noses, Born to Fly a breathtaking tale about the function of bold art for some artists, and the need to inspire viewers curious about living a more tactile and fierce existence.
The feature’s most exciting scene comes at the end, depicting performances in London on the eve of the 2012 Olympics, with Streb, a woman in her 60s, donning a truss to walk down the glass face of London’s City Hall.
