‘Climb Your Dreams’ is a short climbing film about a climber and his greater role in the outdoor community: as a person of color, a climber, and more.
You wouldn’t think that a New York subway could be the start of a rock climbing film, but it is. In this short directed by Josh Greenwood, a climber wanders onto a subway, falls asleep, and is transported to the outdoors. There, he does his favorite thing: climb.
It’s a blurry trip of a video: a hazy dream sequence, a voiceover narration, and a slow hum of sound. “My soul has grown deep like the rivers,” chants the narrator as the climber approaches a crag and chalks up. At first, you don’t notice the subtle, deeper meaning. Then you do.
The climber, Raheim Robinson, is a person of color. He, along with the film director, specifically produced this short to highlight people of color in the outdoor space — to give them representation, to address diversity in the outdoors.
A step beyond that, the narration is a reading of Langston Hughes’ “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” a poem with a dream-like quality to it. It’s only a 3-minute glimpse into this climber’s dream, reality, and mental headspace, but it’s enough to make us want to share.
“Climb Your Dreams” premiered at Banff Mountain Film Festival in 2019.
