Best of the world's mountain films and books celebrated at Banff's 30th annual festival
by Amanda Follett
The mountains create a culture that begs to be told.
They bring adversity, tests of strength and personal challenges. The often bring unpredictability, harsh weather patterns and precarious situations that strike fear into the hearts of the most hardened adventure-seekers. But at the end of the day, they bring the comforts of home, friends and listening ears to share those epics bred amongst the peaks.
That same storytelling tradition has brought about the Banff Mountain Film Festival, which, in its 30-year existence, has been a forum for some of the world's best climbers and earned itself a spot on mountaineering's world stage.
Canmore climber and historian Chic Scott revisits the classic 1970s Clint Eastwood-helmed mountaineering film, "The Eiger Sanction" on Saturday, Nov. 5, at the 2005 Banff Mountain Film Festival.
"The Banff mountain film festival is probably the best known around the world," says Shannon O'Donoghue, associate director of mountain culture for the Banff Centre, which hosts the event. Banff shares its mountain genre with only a few other film festivals, including those in Trento, Italy and Kendall, England.
Explorer and adventurer Sir Ranulph Fiennes, is a special guest of the 2005 Banff Mountain Film Festival.
"But the Banff festival is the biggest and the best known," O'Donoghue says.
Throughout the year, film festival organizers receive upwards of 300 film submissions that will be screened and narrowed down to about 50 finalists, depending on the number of longer, feature-length films. Those finalists are then screened at the festival's 10-day event.
Though the festival has honoured a number of films created right here in the Bow Valley, it attracts submissions from over 20 countries around the world. In early October, entrants and mountain film buffs sit on the edge of their seats, waiting to hear which films will be screened at the event, which takes place from Oct. 29 to Nov. 6 this year. Finalists are announced later in the month.
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Slovenian alpinist Marko Prezelj will speak to the 2005 Banff Mountain Film Festival audience on Saturday, Nov. 5.
In the meantime, there's still plenty to get excited for at this year's Banff Mountain Film Festival. On the event's first Saturday, a special screening of What Remains of Us documents the Dalai Lama's first visual correspondence with his people who remain in Tibet, via video recordings smuggled into the country between 1996 and 2004.
The following Tuesday is home to Radical Reels, an annual crowd-pleaser that brings the audience an evening of adrenaline with a collection of short and feature-length energy-infused footage from extreme sport films submitted to the festival.
On Friday and Saturday evenings, Sir Ranulph Fiennes, called the world's greatest living explorer by the Guinness Book of World Records, and Slovenian climber Marko Prezelj host consecutive evenings of film screenings.
Also on Saturday, acclaimed mountaineer Chic Scott will present a screening of the classic climbing feature film, The Eiger Sanction. Thirty years ago, Scott, who now lives 20 minutes east of Canmore, worked on the film that would go down in history as Hollywood's first foray into the climbing genre. More than a quarter century later, the daring movie set in Switzerland still remains a favourite.
Scott himself is also an icon of mountaineering history, having been awarded the prestigious Summit of Excellence Award in 2000 and, in the same year, the award for best recent work on mountaineering history with his book Pushing the Limits: the Story of Canadian Mountaineering. For many seasoned climbers as well as hopeful ascentists, the Banff Mountain Film Festival offers inspiration for all who partake in mountain life.
"It's a really nice mix of armchair adventure people right up to the very best mountaineers in the world, all sitting in the audience together," O'Donoghue says. "There's a really broad mountain community that has been coming to this festival for a long time, some of them since the first one in 1976. We definitely have a very dedicated audience."
From the success of the film festival came the Banff Mountain Book Festival, which began 12 years ago. "There was lots of interest from these stories that weren't making it to film, but were being made into books," O'Donoghue explains. This year's book festival, which runs Nov. 2 to 4, features speakers like Karsten Heuer, who is presenting his book Being Caribou, a follow-up to his award-winning film of the same name, and film festival director Bernadette McDonald, whose biography of Elizabeth Hawley is also being presented at the festival.
"Another neat theme is there's a lot of women in the festival this year," says O'Donoghue, noting that when McDonald presents with Savage Summit author Jennifer Jordan on Thursday evening, it will be first time two women have taken to the stage together since the festival's inception.
The festival wraps up Sunday evening with an awards ceremony and a notoriously long program that features the best the films mountain culture has to offer. Come prepared to sit, socialize and be amazed by the world of mountaineering culture and the people that are documenting it. These are the stories that mountain enthusiasts the world over will be talking about until the 2006 Banff Mountain Film Festival rolls around.
Amanda Follett, a Canmore-based writer, loves a good story about the mountains, and expects to hear lots of them at this year's Banff Mountain Festivals.
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