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October 22, 2009
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Banff Mountain Film Festival presents first Canadian screening of Everest film The Wildest Dream

Festival lineup includes the world’s best outdoor, environment, adrenaline sports, cultural films
Banff Mountain Film Festival · October 31 to November 8
The Banff Centre · Banff, Alberta · Canada
Information / tickets: 1.800.413.8368 or 403.762.6301 · Full 2009 schedule
A presentation of Mountain Culture and Environment at The Banff Centre

Since the early 1920s, the fate of George Mallory and Andrew Irvine on Everest has been the most enduring mystery in mountaineering. Their highly publicized 1924 attempt to be the first to summit ended in a bank of clouds at the peak, where they both disappeared. More than 75 years later, American alpinist Conrad Anker found Mallory’s frozen body below the summit, with all his gear intact, only deepening the mystery of whether he made the full ascent, and what caused his death. Haunted by Mallory’s story, Anker returned to Everest to try to unravel the mystery. Mallory’s story, and Anker’s, is told in a new film, The Wildest Dream, narrated by Liam Neeson, with voiceover by Ralph Fiennes, and Natasha Richardson in her last film role.

One of 62 film finalists chosen from 277 entries from 28 countries, The Wildest Dream will be screened at the 2009 Banff Mountain Film Festival on Saturday, November 7, and will be introduced by Conrad Anker. Over the nine-day festival, audiences will experience the world’s best films chronicling the passions and obsessions of mountaineers, endurance and extreme athletes, and environmental and cultural advocates.

The festival opens October 31 with two days of film programming, including a screening of Nordwand (The North Face), a big-budget retelling of a true tale of adventure and survival on the north face — or “death face” — of the Eiger. It follows the 1936 attempt at a first ascent by German climbers Toni Kurz and Andi Hinterstoisser and Austrians Willy Angerer and Edi Rainer, which ended in a desperate fight for survival.

On November 1, the festival screens a selection of films by local Bow Valley filmmakers, including Julia Szucs’s short film Pick-up Sticks, Karen McDiarmid’s exploration of Tibetan music and culture, Shining Spirit, and the first Alberta screening of Leanne Allison’s second film, Finding Farley. Known for Being Caribou, a journey of conservation she and her husband Karsten Heuer made, Allison’s Finding Farley is the story of her family’s purely-Canadian trip across the country by canoe, portage, train, and boat to meet iconic author Farley Mowat.

On Tuesday, November 3, the popular Radical Reels screening night returns, hosted by climber/comedian Timmy O’Neill. This year, one of the highlights is an installment of Sender Films’ popular First Ascent series of climbing films. The Impossible Climb traces Chris Sharma’s epic challenge to climb the 300-foot limestone cave on Mt. Clark in Nevada, including massive leaps of faith onto tiny handholds and precipitous free-falls. Sharma will be in Banff to talk about this climb, and others, on November 5.

On Wednesday, November 4, The Snow Show moves to a new night and venue, bringing a list of great ski and snowboard films to The Banff Centre’s thousand-seat Eric Harvie Theatre. The evening discovers deep powder in Japan’s northern mountains in Deep/Shinsetsu, and travels to untracked steeps in Italy, Poland, and Alaska in Re:Session.

On Friday, November 6, the Film Festival resumes with two concurrent evenings of screenings. In the main theatre, the Eric Harvie, French mountaineer Catherine Destivelle will introduce Beyond the Summits, an intimate biographical film that follows her on three classic climbs in Chamonix. In another venue, the Max Bell Auditorium, audience members will catch Paul Diffley’s latest ode to U.K. climbing, Slate Monkeys, enhanced with a full surround sound score and edit courtesy of The Banff Centre’s Audio Post Production Award.

On Saturday, November 7, and Sunday, November 8, full days of film screenings include Mustang — Journey of Transformation, Will Parrinello’s exploration of one of Tibet’s last isolated pockets of authentic Buddhist culture, featuring the Dalai Lama and narrated by Richard Gere. The controversial film Solo begins with a distress call from just off the coast of New Zealand. It’s from endurance kayaker Andrew McAuley, who set off to chronicle his 1600-kilometer solo paddle across the notoriously rough Tasman Sea from Australia. Through the lens of filmmaker Guido Perrini, the audience will see what the process of adventure filmmaking is all about in Ten — A Cameraman’s Tale. Tracking freeriders from Alaska to Chile to Russia, the film captures the joys and natural dangers of making ski films.

On Sunday, November 8, an international jury will announce the Best of the Festival awards. Jury members include Canadian mountaineer Don Bowie, French competitive climber and ice climber Daniel du Lac, mountaineer and Mountain Info editor Lindsay Griffin, American documentary filmmaker Kristi Denton Cohen, and Michael Pause, artistic director of the Tegernsee Mountain Film Festival.

Founded in 1976, the Banff Mountain Film Festival has become the biggest and best-known mountain film festival in the world. Accompanied by the Banff Mountain Book Festival, it is held annually at The Banff Centre in Banff, Alberta, Canada. Following the festival, films are selected for the popular Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour, which takes Banff films to over 500 screenings around the globe.

Full schedule of Banff Mountain Film Festival film screenings

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For more information on Mountain Culture and Environment at The Banff Centre

The Banff Mountain Film Festival is presented by National Geographic and The North Face, sponsored by Deuter, Outdoor Research (OR), Parks Canada, Three Cups of Tea, Polartec, and PrimaLoft, with support from MSR, Fernie Alpine Resort, PETZL, World Expeditions, Mountain Hardwear, Mountain Equipment Co-op, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and The Calgary Herald.