The scary part, for those of us living in the West's posh resort towns, is the undeniable seed of reality in the pseudo-documentary "The Lost People of Mountain Village."
This eerily funny 15-minute film by Carol Black and Neal Martens will be screened Friday, July 14, at the nexStage Theater in Ketchum. The 2:30 p.m. screening is planned as part of Community Housing Week, a three-day event designed to raise awareness about the dire social and political challenges facing residents in this ever-more-expensive part of the world.
Though the film is set in Mountain Village, an upscale town above the historic city of Telluride, Colo., its themes are universal to resort towns throughout the West, if something of a caricature.
The mystery unfolds when a lost backcountry skier stumbles onto a baronial fortress of structures—apparently completely uninhabited. The only thing anthropologists agree on is that it may never be clear what really happened to the "Lost People of Mountain Village."
In this tongue-in-cheek documentary, a number of "experts" concoct theories about the passing of a civilization.
Were the inhabitants so wealthy they believed themselves deities? Did the fur-coated inhabitants die out because harsh winters prevented commuting servants from attending them?
Or, with no gas station or grocery store to fuel their extravagantly consumptive lifestyles, did these hapless folk become cannibals?
The only thing that's for sure is that the people vanished, leaving behind behemoth and extravagant buildings in the high mountain winds of the San Juan Mountains. The people who lived there are a mystery.
The film has been acclaimed by the Boulder Adventure Film Festival, the Telluride Mountainfilm Festival and others around the West. It made stops in Hailey and Ketchum in February as part of the Telluride Mountainfilm Festival, on tour.
"It was an interesting portrayal of mountain towns and what they're facing in terms of how the spirit of the community can be affected by the transitory nature of our communities," said Environmental Resource Center Executive Director Craig Barry, adding that it's an "extreme example" of a town withering in the face of second-home development.
Barry conceded, however, that despite obvious differences between the Sun Valley area and Mountain Village, there are also similarities. Like one extinction hypothesis for Mountain Village's passing, the northern Wood River Valley communities of Ketchum and Sun Valley depend largely on services from people who do not also live in the towns.
But more than anything, Barry said the film drove home for him the point that there is a sense of community in the Wood River Valley that's worth preserving, worth working for.
"It doesn't come about haphazardly," he said. "I think we need to reinvent our sense of community and invite them (second-home owners) to be a part of it."
The free Friday screening is sponsored by Advocates for Real Community Housing and the Blaine-Ketchum Housing Authority.
