When Keith Reimink graduated from film school in New York City it was just a year after 9/11, and there was no film work to be found anywhere in the city.
His solution? Get as far away as possible and work as a cook in the interior of Alaska. This job spawned fifteen years of cooking and traveling.
Reimink's travels eventually lead him to the South Pole in 2009 and resulted in the self-directed, self-funded documentary No Horizon Anymore: A Year Long Journey at the Bottom of the World.
“I do like to say that its an accidental film in that I was hired as a cook, that was my primary job, and that the film was something I did in my free time as a personal project. At the end of the year I went back and looked at hundreds and hundreds of hours of HD footage and was able to cut something together into a coherent story,” says Reimink.
He spent his time in the dark, desolate world of Antarctica cooking for the scientists on a one building, state-of-the-art research center. Outside of carrying out their research, scientists and other workers on the base have access to all the amenities of the fully functional single building that houses two gyms, several libraries and a greenhouse. Since it is such a small group, roughly 40 people, social interactions can become almost like a reality show.
“There are a lot of cliques that form, you gravitate towards the people that you want to hang out with. You form these long lasting, very intimate relationships with those people, because they are your people for the winter,” he says.
The film will be screening this Saturday at the Melwood Screening Room in Oakland at 2pm as part of the Three Rivers Film Festival.
