Documentary to explore BASE jumpers' leap of faith

By Steven Zeitchik

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Oscar winner Alex Gibney is taking off with "Gravity," a documentary about the extreme sport of BASE jumping.

The director of "Taxi to the Dark Side" and "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" will executive produce and serve as a mentor on the nonfiction film, a look at death-defying athletes who jump off buildings and cliffs. Marah Strauch is the director.

In BASE jumping, begun in the 1970s by engineer-filmmaker Carl Boenish, athletes jump off natural and manmade objects without a cushion or harness, opening their parachutes late in the jump. (BASE stands for "buildings, antenna, span and Earth"). The movie draws from footage Boenish took three decades ago as well as a wealth of footage from contemporary BASE jumpers.

Gibney noted that the movie will be "a riveting account of a magnificent obsession: falling in love with the love of falling."

Strauch, who has been shooting and collecting footage for five years, said she hopes to convey that the sport is not so much a publicity ploy as a life-affirming, if dangerous, passion. "It is a thinking-man's film about a sport that is too often thought of as a mere stunt or media tactic," she said. "We want to show the sublime beauty, grace and poetry of human foot-launched flight."

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter