“The Island” Blackcoconut (Canada)

──What inspired you to create this film for GIFF 2025?

I didn't necessarily have a plan to make a film until I saw the call for submissions, and I couldn't get out of my head the adventure I’d had on that island the year before. I really wanted to make a film, and I thought it would be a fun, exciting adventure to try and get a conclusion to all the misadventures we’d had on St. Peter’s Island the year before. It only made sense to try and use the footage I'd already shot on the island and plan a trip back to see if I could conquer the geocache that was still out there.

──How many people worked on your film, and how long did the production take?

A very, very small team. It was me writing it and starring in it, and my lovely wife, Kenzie, helped film a lot of the scenes at home. My friend Chris helped with the drone footage — he actually came with me when I went to venture across the sandbar, saw me off, and took those cinematic overhead shots as I made my way out there. And then, of course, Justin, who the film is really about. He’s obviously in the footage, and I got him on the phone to hear some of his story about the poison ivy.

──What was the most memorable or challenging part of making your film?If we go back to when we first started shooting any footage for it, the most challenging part was certainly recovering from all the poison ivy we’d gotten trapped in. Where we camped, we were quite literally swimming in poison ivy — and it was high-bush poison ivy, so I didn’t really notice it directly. We climbed around the island for an entire day, and we really put ourselves through it. Suffering from that poison ivy was pretty serious.

But then when it came to actually filming the deliberate scenes for the GIFF submission, the most challenging part was finding a time to get to the island without a boat again. I didn’t have access to that canoe anymore since I’d sold it. So we had to cross on foot at low tide, and there’s only about once a month when the tide is at peak low, giving you the biggest window to cross safely. I didn’t want to get stuck out there. I brought extra food and clothes in case I got wet if the tides came back up. We had to plan it accordingly, which meant there were only three chances all summer I could go. I’d missed the first two, so the low tide in August was my last chance.

──Is there a moment in your film that you hope geocachers around the world will notice or appreciate?

I hope that geocachers appreciate the idea of caching for a quality experience rather than quantity. Like a lot of cachers, I love the numbers and data aspect, but I find I always have a more memorable and special time when I’m going for a specific victory rather than chasing high numbers. That’s mentioned in the film — that going for one cache or one adventure can give you a really rewarding experience, versus stopping every 150 meters down a trail for little park-and-grabs or bench caches. That’s still part of the game and I love it dearly, but if I only got one cache a month, I’m okay with that as long as those are really fun adventures I never forget.

──Please share a message for geocachers in Japan.Hello to all the geocachers in Japan. Thank you so much for all your hard work putting together events, fun caches, and keeping the spirit of this awesome hobby alive out there. We live in very different areas of the world, but it’s still the same thing we enjoy doing — exploring, having adventures, getting outside, using our brains and our bodies to explore this world. I hope one day to come out to Japan and have lots of hiking and adventures there too. I’m looking forward to meeting some of you when that happens.

出演：Blackcoconut、tonitta2119、Jin Kakino