Adventure Filmmakers’ Seminar 2006

Keith Partridge

Winter 1990 saw Keith Partridge resign from his job as a cameraman and sound-recordist with the BBC after six years of service. Three weeks later, with climbing suspended in a torrent of spindrift, he was holed up in a snow-cave contemplating his future. His strategy had been a high risk one, involving the sale of everything he owned — everything, that is, except his climbing kit. As another bitter storm swept across Iceland’s Vatnajokull icecap, fuelling his passion for wild places, the marriage of adventure and film-making seemed an obvious course.

Sixteen years down the line, he has now been involved in more than 50 climbing and adventure films winning over 15 international awards and two British Academy Awards. In 2004 he was presented with the International Explorers Festival”Camera Extreme” award for his work on series such as “Wild Climb” for the BBC and on the documentary feature film of Joe Simpson’s Touching the Void.

His multi-skilled background has enabled him to develop shooting techniques that have catapulted the viewer to the steepest of rock faces, the most challenging of ice and the remotest of locations.

He has lectured on adventure filmmaking to the Royal Television Society, the British Academy, and the Royal Geographical Society. He is a tutor at the Extreme Film School and his written articles have appeared in many of the UK’s climbing and outdoor magazines.

Born in 1966 in prairie-like East Anglia, he is now based in Scotland where he lives with his wife Andrea and son Jamie. Having spent 20 years climbing, trekking, biking, and shooting film all over the world he still finds it strange just where a lad born in the flattest part of the UK can find himself hanging out — camera in hand of course.