Steve Heller is excited. It seems like the natural reaction to fast-paced images of extreme sports, but he is also excited to be bringing such adrenaline filled films to Lopez.

On March 14, the “Radical Reels” section of the Banff Mountain Film Festival will be coming to the Lopez Center. The event will be special not only because it proved difficult to get here, but because the funds raised from it will go to the Lopez Center and the Family Resource Center.

The “Radical Reels” section of the Banff festival is a special screening of the wildest high-adrenaline films entered in the event. So many action films were submitted to the film festival that they could not be fitted in to the regular screenings. Thus the “Radical Reels” evening presentation was born, allotting a whole evening to the images that Heller calls “canned adreline.”

Heller is the initiator and sponsor of the project. He was near Banff about three years ago and, hearing of the quality of the photography in the festival, wanted to bring it to Lopez.

However, it was not as easy as that and there were set backs with logistics. Contrary to expectations though, four months ago Heller received a call saying that the “Radical Reels” section of the festival could indeed be brought to Lopez.

“It’s mind boggling what they are doing,” says Heller of the participants in the film, going on to to describe the affirmative effect such films have on the mind. “I was watching the ‘Radical Reel,’ witnessing the effects on my mind, and it was very life affirming. Almost like embodied life force, it’s made me say ‘life is incrediable dont go down, go up’.”

Lopez Center will be suitably outfitted as a movie theatre. Richard Sorenson, director of Lopez Center, described the benefits of the space. “We’ll be using the wide screen” he says, in addition to a new projector. “There will be a raffle” he adds, “we want to make it as fun as possible.”