World Tour Host - Australia

Please tell us about yourself Jemima?
I grew up in the far north of Australia. The first time I saw snow was in Lake Louise when I was 21 years old on a gap year. That was also the first time I experienced the Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival. That year had a big impact on my life, and I fell in love with the mountains, snow, and the festival. A decade later, I had the opportunity to host the screenings in Australia, and I fell in love with the festival all over again. Now, I am proud to host around 80 screenings of the World Tour in Australia each year and attend the festival in Banff annually. It always feels special coming back to Banff.

Describe a typical day in your life as a World Tour host? 
Varied! What I love about being a WT host is the same thing that I love about the festival itself – you never know exactly what you are going to get, but it’s always going to be entertaining. When the festival is on tour I spend a lot of time in planes, ubers, hotels, and venues. I’ve eaten way too much popcorn and choc tops for dinner. We take the tour to some pretty stunning spots around the country, and I always try to sneak in a micro-adventure in each location I visit. A typical day might look like this: transit to the screening city, and arrive at the venue mid-afternoon. Set up the foyer and conduct a tech run-through with the venue staff. Connect with local volunteers or adventurers we have attending the screening. Open doors, greet, and interact with the audience (this is one of my favourite parts). Introduce the screening, and sit back and watch the audience's reaction to the films. Intermission is a great opportunity to interact with the locals (get direct feedback and also tips on local hikes, bike tracks, or adventures I can do the following morning). After intermission, I’ll have a short Q&A with a local adventurer or organisation and then introduce the second half. At the end of the show, I always ask people as they are leaving what their favourite film was. The best answer is: I can’t decide – they were all great! The next morning, I make an effort to get up early and enjoy some local adventure for a couple of hours. Then it starts all over again.

Tell us about any funny stories, memorable moments, and mishaps from the road? 
So many things can and do go wrong. We’ve had lightning strike a venue and short circuit the equipment, fire alarms and evacuations, contestants winning skateboards – trying them out on stage and almost breaking a leg, and many flight delays – the most notable being a fish spill in the cargo hold which resulted in a 3-hour delay and our host making it to the screening with only minutes to spare. Thankfully, when you are screening to an outdoorsy audience, they are pretty adept at adapting to the various hiccups we encounter.

The most notable moments and mishaps include:

Territory Tough:
We have an outdoor venue in the Northern Territory that regularly has fruit bats flying in front of the screen and possums running around the grounds. We screen there in the “dry season”, but one year, an unseasonal rainstorm hit 20 minutes into the screening. Undeterred, the locals put on their hats and rain jackets and sat in the rain to watch the remainder of the show. Most were happy with the cooling temperatures the rain brought.

No Birds:
In Melbourne, we screen in a beautiful old theatre (built in the 1920s by a famous architect) situated on one of the busiest pedestrian streets in the city. It is a stunning grand theatre with a projection box room at the very top of the building. We’d completed the tech check and were just about to open doors when the projectionist came running into the foyer looking like he’d seen a ghost. It turns out he is terrified of birds, and a pigeon had somehow found its way into the projection room – he was trapped in a small space with an equally terrified bird. Thankfully, one of our level-headed volunteers knew what to do – they grabbed a tablecloth, went to the projection room, captured the bird, and then had to walk past the line of patrons to release the pigeon on the busy city street. Crisis averted, we opened doors, and just as the first film started, we received a frantic call from the projectionist letting us know there was ANOTHER pigeon in the projection room. The same volunteer came to the rescue again, removed the second bird, patched up the hole in the projection room ceiling with duct tape, and the show went on. The projectionist spent most of the night as close as possible to the projection room door and couldn’t get out of there quickly enough at the end of the screening. The audience was none the wiser. No pigeons were harmed.

Adventurer overload:
The highlight is always having films featuring local adventurers like Cas and Jonesy and then having them on stage to talk about their adventures. We recently hosted a screening in Sydney, and in the audience was the first woman to row solo across the Pacific – non-stop and unassisted, the fastest person to sail solo, non-stop and unassisted around Antarctica, and the first person to kayak solo, non-stop and unassisted from Australia to New Zealand. All three are avid attendees of the festival. It was pretty awesome to have so much adventure talent in one room.

What would you say are the differences/challenges hosting in your country? 
We don’t have a lot of typical “mountain towns” in Australia – mainly because we don’t have that many mountains. But we do have a dedicated following of the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour. A lot of our audience only experience the mountains once a year on vacation, and the rest of the time, they have to live vicariously through the films in the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour. There is, however, something special about sitting outside, in a deckchair on Darwin’s waterfront with 95% humidity and sweltering heat, watching skiers and mountaineers complaining about the freezing conditions and frostbite.

Any other updates that you’d like to share? 
The best part of being a World Tour host is having audience members come up to me at a screening and tell me how the festival or a particular film has inspired them to go on a big adventure in their own lives. I love seeing the same faces come year after year. It is like an annual catch-up, and I love getting updates on the adventures they have been on in the previous 12 months.

Author: Jemima Robinson (World Tour Host, Australia)

If you’re interested in becoming an international World Tour Host (for countries outside of Canada/USA), please email: worldtourinfo@banffcentre.ca