"Adversity is good for us" | Alone Across Gola

When you’re on the edge of peril, would you remember to keep on filming? For Jude Kriwald in Alone Across Gola, the film kept rolling, unbeknownst to anyone, as he navigated a life-defining moment.

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“I won’t give too many spoilers away, but where I get to real peril. I wasn’t meant to be recording. The GoPro on my handlebars was left on by mistake,” Jude tells D&CFilm.

And it was a breath-gasping moment. You can feel the jungle air get a little heavier.

Adventurous spirit

Alone Across Gola sees Jude aim to recapture the adventurous spirit of his youth with a bike ride in Liberia’s Gola rainforest. The documentary follows Jude as he grasps at experiencing something more challenging and memorable and decides to take an uncharted route through the jungle. It’s a solo journey that inspires reflection and sees Jude balancing on the edge of danger.

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Even in the midst of all that adventure, he does keep the footage coming in.

“There’s a moment in the film where I’m carrying my bike across the bridge on my back – the bridge is just two very thin logs the width of my feet. When I first saw it, I thought, this might be the end of my journey. Then I thought, why don’t I just test it without the bike. And then the thought just came to my head… well, if you’re going to walk to that side anyway, you might as well take a tripod.”

Balance

It’s that kind of thinking that has led people to ask if there was a second person along for the filming (there wasn’t). But taking yourself out of the moment to film can be a tough balance for an adventurer.

“As someone who wants to go on adventures, primarily for my own sake, with a secondary purpose of wanting to share it with others, if that bit of sharing is going to in any way hinder the first bit, then you really have to weigh that up,” says Jude.

Spontaneity

It’s a sense of living in the moment with spontaneity that can sometimes be hindered by reaching for a camera. So why film in the first place?

“One reason, which I didn’t know at the time, is when you go through an adventure, it’s very hard to portray with just words that it was hard and it was scary, but there’s something about a film which can really take you there and make you feel the emotions,” says Jude.

A gift for myself

“Actually, it’s been an incredible gift for myself to have this. It’s something which is so personal to me that’s really valuable to have and to share that with people.”

That sharing and reflection is something that is key to the film.

“I struggled to have the trip that I expected,” says Jude. “I struggled to connect to the locals. I did have some great moments, but also found it quite difficult and challenging. That’s what drove me to try and cross this trackless part of the jungle. And I really did, unexpectedly, go through a personal moment of unexpected adversity.

“I’d got way more than I’d expected. I wanted to talk about mental health and about feeling scared to pick up your dreams that you left behind when you were younger. The jungle was a very physical manifestation of that,” he says.

Follow what matters

“The film is ostensibly about going through the jungle, but it’s really a film about mental health and trying to follow what matters to oneself.”

It’s that focus that has really made a surprising impact.

“I showed it at the Royal Geographic Society in London, to a convention full of adventurers, and the number of people who came up to me afterwards and talked about mental health and about how it feels when you park your passion – that really struck a chord.”

And in this techno, virtual, super-highway world, why do we still need adventurers? Jude refers to the Bob Bitchin quote: ‘attitude is the difference between an ordeal and an adventure’.

Adversity is good for us

Jude says: “It’s about intentionally picking a little bit of adversity and accepting and acknowledging and reminding ourselves that a little bit of adversity is good for us.”

Some people have enough adversity as it is, he says, but there are a lot of people in a similar position to him who feel like something’s missing sometimes.

“I don’t think there’s anything particularly profound about crossing a jungle or rowing an ocean in itself, but I do think the role of the adventurer is to ignite this conversation, that you can go out and do something and get a bit scratched and you get a bit bruised, but you come out, and you’re thinking, ‘wow, that was a whirlwind!’”

It’s an antidote to a world that feels driven by more control and more comfort.

“It’s been a huge adventure making the film,” admits Jude, who, as a first time filmmaker, still struggles with the description. “It’s been incredibly exciting. And I’m very grateful to my editor, Christian [Burnett]. He basically mentored me through the making of the actual documentary for the four or five months it took us. But I’ve loved it. I thrive when I’m doing new things.”

Self-reliance

When he came out of the jungle, Jude realised he didn’t want to talk about himself. He’d reached a new level of self-reliance – there was no use complaining about things, because there was no one to complain to.

“But I also realized very quickly that this isn’t a sustainable way to go through a connected life,” he says. His approach has been to not focus on the small negatives.

“Instead of looking at how far we have to go, I’d like to look at how far we’ve come. And that’s been a real positive for me,” he says.

“We think that because we’ve had however many hundreds of years of democracy, we should be able to sort everything out by now, but we are imperfect creatures. We’ve got a lot we can still improve, but I’ve also realized that we should give ourselves a pat on the back, before we go on to ask, what’s the next thing we can do to help the people around us.”

Alone Across Gola by Jude Kriwald is at the English Riviera Film Festival on March 15 at the Lyceum Theatre Torquay. Get your tickets