Q&A: Lights On Filmmaker Michael Brown

When a The North Face expedition team made up of Conrad Anker, Pete Athans, Kristoffer Erickson, and others set out to Nepal in April 2005, its biggest challenge wasn't climbing a 21,128-foot Himalayan peak called Cholatse. It was helping Dr. Geoff Tabin—an American ophthalmologist and founder of the Himalayan Cataract Project—to perform cataract surgeries on 255 blind villagers. The story of the team's medical work and high-altitude climbing became the subject of an Outside feature story (see “The Light of the Seven Mountain Suns,” December 2005), and a documentary film called Light of the Himalaya, directed by Michael Brown, a 15-year veteran of adventure filmmaking. Since premiering, the 72-minute film has won awards at the Boulder International Film Festival and New Zealand's Wanaka Mountain Film Festival. Outside's Megan Michelson sat down with Boulder, Colorado-based Brown for a chat about what it's like to have a job that takes you to the top of the world.