All Events Feature Film
November
Event Details
LPFF 2026 Opening Night Selection A Life Outside: American Mountain Guides explores a century
Event Details
LPFF 2026 Opening Night Selection
A Life Outside: American Mountain Guides explores a century of American mountaineering through the extraordinary life and legacy of Paul Petzoldt, one of the pioneering figures of American climbing and outdoor education. A legendary guide and adventurer, Petzoldt climbed in the Himalayas, trained soldiers in the mountains during World War II, helped shape the Exum guide tradition in the Tetons, and founded the National Outdoor Leadership School, influencing generations of climbers, guides, and outdoor leaders.
His story is interwoven with a new generation of professional mountain guides, including Phil Powers, Jessica Baker, and Andy Blair, as they lead clients through the Tetons and the Alps and confront the same fundamental questions that defined Petzoldt’s life: How do you manage risk in an inherently dangerous environment? How do you pass hard-earned knowledge from one generation to the next? And why do some people feel compelled to build their lives in the mountains?
Filmmaker Mat Hames blends remarkable archival material with sweeping contemporary cinematography, as the story moves between past and present, from the early days of American mountain guiding to the highly skilled profession it has become today. Along the way, A Life Outside reveals judgment, trust, mentorship, resilience, and the guiding that can profoundly change a person.
At once an adventure story, a history of American mountaineering, and a meditation on our enduring relationship with wild places, A Life Outside asks what the mountains teach us.
Guests
Mat Hames- Director
Mat Hames is an Emmy Award winning Producer and Director, known for his documentaries included on Independent Lens, Amazon Prime, AppleTV, SundanceTV, Netflix, and Kanopy. He also is a founder of Alpheus Media, a studio that produces content for global brands. He was Knighted by King Albert the II of Belgium for his work on his film about the Belgian Resistance, Last Best Hope.
Hames’ directorial debut, Last Best Hope, traced a downed P-47 pilot’s journey through escape lines in Belgium during WWII. His next film When I Rise premiered at the SXSW Film Festival and HotDocs in Canada, and went on to win awards at 10 additional festivals, before being nominated for an IDA Award. Hames spent the next three years making What Was Ours (Prime Video) on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming while simultaneously continuing to manage Alpheus Media’s commercial brand work. What Was Ours received a prestigious ITVS Open Call grant, had an award winning festival run, was included in Independent Lens on PBS, and was featured on HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.
Hames also made the short Fighting Goliath, narrated by Robert Redford. Later, his acclaimed 12 hour long PBS series Power Trip: the Story of Energy recieved funding from the Sloan Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and Pritzker Innovation Fund. Based on the book by Michael Webber, the Power Trip series captures the sweeping history of energy history with interviews with over 100 historians, scientists and energy policy makers. For Power Trip, Hames leads an international production team to film in Iceland, Japan, Singapore, Israel, France, Italy, Wales, England, Ireland and the USA. The series is in it’s second season, won two Telly Awards and is now streaming on all the major platforms.
Power Trip: The Story of Energy has to date been seen by more than 10 million viewers on networks in over 10 countries. PBS selected Power Trip to debut it’s new streaming platform on Prime, PBS Documentaries, where it was a Top 10 series. Additionally, PBS selected Power Trip to feature on it’s official YouTube channel for it’s 1.3 million subscribers.
His series A State of Mind has won four National Academy of Television Arts and Science Heartland Chapter Emmy Awards, while being nominated for six. His television documentary Fossil Country was nominated for the 45th Annual News and Doc Emmy Awards, and won a regional Emmy.
Hames also made a portrait of two Native American Artists, The Art of Home (PBS Living Channel), filmed in Santa Fe, Denver, and Wyoming.
Hames is a co-founder of commercial production company Alpheus Media, based in Austin Texas. In addition to documentaries, with Alpheus Media, Mat has also directed national TV commercials for global brands, and made short films for clients like Warner Bros, The Economist, Johns Hopkins, University of Texas and MD Anderson Cancer Center, as well as hundreds of online video campaigns for cause-based brands such as LIVESTRONG, Movember, Athletes for Hope, Partners in Health, and Bill and Economist Educational Foundation.
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Time
Thursday, November 5 | All Day
Directed by
Mat Hames
Genre
Documentary
Year
2025
Runtime
90 minutes
Language
English
Event Details
We’re proud to announce a special screening of SHERLOCK JR on Saturday November 7th to honor the historic Palace Theatre’s 100th anniversary during the 25th Lake Placid Film
Event Details
We’re proud to announce a special screening of SHERLOCK JR on Saturday November 7th to honor the historic Palace Theatre’s 100th anniversary during the 25th Lake Placid Film Festival (11/5-8)! Additionally, world-renowned composer and silent film accompanist Makia Matsumura will be providing live piano accompaniment for the screening. Don’t miss out on what is sure to be a magical screening!
A kindly movie projectionist (Buster Keaton) longs to be a detective. When his fiancée (Kathryn McGuire) is robbed by a local thief (Ward Crane), the poor projectionist is framed for the crime. Using his amateur detective skills, the projectionist follows the thief to the train station — only to find himself locked in a train car. Disheartened, he returns to his movie theater, where he falls asleep and dreams that he is the great Sherlock Holmes.
Screening rights courtesy of Janus Films
Guests
Makia Matsumura- Composer, Silent Film Accompanist
Composer and pianist Makia Matsumura has built a dynamic career spanning film scoring, concert music, and live silent film accompaniment. Her music has been featured on ABC News, NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation), Turner Classic Movies, and Netflix, as well as at venues including Lincoln Center (NYC), Musikverein (Vienna), Konzerthaus (Berlin), and NHK and Suntory Halls (Tokyo).
A Tokyo native, Makia began studying piano and composition at six and made her debut as a composer-performer at twelve. She has performed internationally with orchestras such as the Hungarian National Symphony, Berlin Radio Symphony, and the Tokyo and Kyoto Symphony Orchestras. She earned a bachelor’s degree in composition from Tokyo University of the Arts and a master’s degree from The Juilliard School, where she won the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s First Hearing Competition and had works premiered by the Juilliard Symphony.
Since discovering the art of silent film accompaniment in 2003, she has become one of the most sought-after pianists in the field. She has performed at MoMA (Museum of Modern Art), the Film Society of Lincoln Center, and the Library of Congress, as well as the National Film Archive of Japan. In 2018, she was invited as a Faculty Artist at the Art of the Piano festival at the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music, where she lectured on silent film accompaniment and improvisation.
Makia also provides recorded scores for silent film restorations and home video releases, including Kino Lorber’s Pioneers of African-American Cinema (2015) and Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers (2018), as well as the 2024 restoration of The Dragon Painter from Milestone Films.
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Time
Saturday, November 7 | 5:00pm – 6:30pm
Directed by
Buster Keaton
Genre
Comedy
Year
1924
Runtime
45 minutes
Language
English