While most outdoor adventure films come at you with macho, testosterone-fueled action sequences, a Prescott woman is making a film about rock climbing with a different focus.

Titiana Shostak-Kinker, who works as an outdoor education instructor at Prescott College, said she believes there is a gap in the rock climbing films that have been made up to this point.

“A lot of them are based on ratings and difficulty level and adrenaline,” Shostak-Kinker said. “They tend to be quite male-dominated, sometimes there’s a token female in the film, but often there are more men than women.”

So Shostak-Kinker decided to make a film about women rock climbers, with the perspective better portraying a woman’s point of view.

“This film is really more about the depiction of flow and meditation and the state of being on the rock that one can achieve by just slowing down and being in nature,” she said. “Actually, the women that are in the film climb quite hard, but we mostly climb for the feeling of losing yourself in the moment through climbing.

“It’s that ability to just tune out any distractions and just focus completely on the present moment, and that’s what climbing is really about.”

While the adventure film industry has been dominated by males and machismo for years, Shostak-Kinker said it has also been dominated by the idea of “conquering the peak.”

“My question is: What about the experience along the way?” she asked. “Or what about the relationships along the way? — the closeness to nature and being away from all of the everyday comfort?

“What about that little part of the story?”

For the full story, please see the Friday, July 24 issue of the Sedona Red Rock News.