 MEDIA RELEASE |
|
MEDIA RELEASE |
For immediate release
October 20, 2000
Climbing and Feature Films
Headline Record-Breaking Year at the Banff Mountain Film Festival
Awe-inspiring climbs and dramatic mountain stories highlight the finalists in this year’s Banff Mountain Film Festival competition. From the 213 films representing 24 countries entered in the 2000 competition, 41 finalists will be screened at the festival in Banff. The Banff Mountain Film Festival takes place November 3 to 5, 2000.
"This year’s film program is the strongest I've seen," says Bernadette McDonald, Director of the Banff Centre for Mountain Culture, which hosts the event. "Two new categories, short film and feature film, have definitely added to the variety. We have several young Canadian filmmakers in the short category, and the feature films screened on Sunday evening in the Margaret Greenham Theatre are powerful, moving mountain dramas. I think our audience is also going to appreciate the incredible strength and variety of the climbing category - from Dhaulagiri to Yosemite - featuring some of the most exciting climbers of our time."
An international jury will meet during festival week to select the winners in six categories and to choose a Grand Prize winner. The festival audience will vote for the People’s Choice Award. Winners will be announced on Sunday, November 5, at 5:30 p.m.
The 2000 jury includes Arlene Burns (U.S.A.), Mireille Chiocca (France), Giorgio Daidola (Italy), Stephen Venables (U.K.) and Roger Vernon (Canada). Jury biographies are attached.
This year’s finalists are:
Alpine Club of Canada Award for Best Film on Climbing - Finalists
Best Film on Mountain Culture, sponsored by Petzl America - Finalists
Best Film on Mountain Environment, sponsored by Canadian Mountain Holidays - Finalists
Best Short Mountain Film - Finalists
Best Film on Mountain Sports, sponsored by MountainZone.com - Finalists
Best Mountain Fiction Film - Finalists
The Festival Grand Prize is sponsored by the Banff Centre for Management and Eagle Creek Travel Gear. The People’s Choice award is sponsored by The Hostel Shop, Calgary, Alberta
The following films will be screened as part of the Saturday evening Radical Reels program.
To order tickets for festival events, contact the Banff
Centre Box Office at 403-762-6301 or
1-800-413-8368 or you can order online at www.banffcentre.ab.ca/CMC
The
25th annual Banff Mountain Film Festival,
presented by Eagle Creek Travel Gear and National Geographic Society,
and sponsored by Patagonia, Polartec, Dunham Bootmakers, Mountainzone.com,
Air Canada and Eveo.com,
with assistance from Christie Digital/Electrohome, Lake Louise Ski Area and Petzl.
2000 Banff Mountain Film Festival Jury
Arlene Chester Burns, U.S.A.
Since the early ’80s, Arlene has been in perpetual motion, exploring the hidden
niches of the Himalayas, the South Pacific, Southeast Asia, eastern Africa, the Americas,
Mongolia and Russia. She has travelled throughout the world by kayak: including the first
descent of the Brahmaputra River in Tibet and over a decade of exploring rivers in Nepal,
Russia and Chile.
Arlene is a professional river guide, kayak instructor and expedition leader. She was the first woman river guide in New Zealand and a member of the U.S. women’s whitewater team from 1989 to 92. She organized and led the first Japanese-Russian expedition to the controversial Kuril Islands in 1992.
Her photographs and writing are recognized throughout the outdoor industry, and her long list of film projects includes acting as Meryl Streep’s trainer, stunt double and technical advisor in The River Wild, and hosting numerous outdoor-adventure television series including "Trailside", "Anyplace Wild" and "Survival of the Fittest". Burns has produced and acted as talent in a number of prime-time documentaries featuring kayaking expeditions in locations around the world.
Mireille Chiocca, France
Born in Marseille, where she studied law, Chiocca moved to Autrans and began working for
the city government, organizing ski competitions such as the European Junior Championship
and the World Military Championship. She helped promote the most popular cross-country
skiing competition in France, la Foulée Blanche. In 1984, the mayor asked her to organize
a film festival called Festival du Film Neige et Glace d’Autrans. Chiocca has been
the director of this festival, now called Festival du Film de Montagne et Aventure
d'Autrans, for 17 years. Chiocca is preparing a music festival for September and has been
the technical advisor of the Festival du Film de Glisse in Grenoble for the past five
years.
Giorgio Daidola, Italy
Giorgio Daidola is a journalist, an expert skier and a film director whose love of
mountain adventure has taken him all over the world. He was born in Torino, Italy, and
today lives in Frassilongo, a village in the mountains near Trento, where he is a
professor of business finance and sport tourism management at the Faculty of Economics of
Trento University.
His articles and photos have appeared in Powder Magazine, Desnivel, Alp, Montagnes, Alpirando, No Limits, Backpacker and many others. He was editor of the magazine Rivista della Montagna from 1980 to 1987 and since 1984 has edited the annual special "Dimensione Sci" issue of the magazine.
Daidola has served as a jury member at the Diablerets, Trento, San Sebastian and Autrans mountain film festivals and was a member of the Trento film festival council from 1988 to 1992.
He has participated in mountain expeditions on seven continents and has telemark skied all over the world, including the first telemark descent of 8013-metre Shishanpagma. With Carlo Rossi, Daidola directed Il passo in curva, winner of the special FISI (Italian Winter Sport National Federation) prize at the 1993 Trento film festival. He is a professional ski instructor and adventure group leader and has appeared as a skier in many movies including The Time Machine, Sci a talloni liberi, No Man’s Land and Sciatori 6 neve una. Daidola is a member of the Polartec Challenge board.
Stephen Venables, U.K.
Stephen Venables is a mountaineer and writer, best known for his part in the 1980
Anglo-American-Canadian Everest expedition, which pioneered a new route up the
mountain’s biggest face. Venables was the first Briton to reach the summit of Everest
without supplementary oxygen. During 14 visits to the Himalaya, he has made many first
ascents including Kishtwar Shivling, the Solu Tower and Panch Chuli V.
Stephen’s first mountain experiences were in the European Alps, where he skied as a child. Later he tackled some of the most famous European climbs such as the North Face of the Eiger. He still thinks of the Alps as home, although he loves to travel to the world’s remotest places.
His first book, Painted Mountains, won the 1986 Boardman-Tasker Prize. Everest -Alone at the Summit was runner-up in 1989 and is now in its seventh edition. Himalaya Alpine Style has become a seminal work on modern Himalayan climbing and won the Grand Prize at the 1996 Banff Mountain Book Festival. His most recent book, A Slender Thread, is shortlisted for this year’s mountain literature award and the Boardman-Tasker Prize.
Venables’ most recent trips were a return to South Georgia with Reinhold Messner and Conrad Anker to take part in the WGNH/Nova/White Mountain Films/IMAX movie Shackleton’s Antarctic Adventure and a climb of the Matterhorn in tweed suit and nailed boots for a BBC documentary about the first ascent. He lives with his wife and two sons in the English city of Bath, at a safe distance from the mountains.
Roger Vernon, Canada
A native of Alberta, Roger Vernon has combined his love of the mountains and his
desire to make images into a flourishing career as an internationally respected
cinematographer.
In the 26 years since attending the Banff Centre’s two-year Visual Communications program, his expertise has taken him onto mountains and glaciers around the world, most recently into the Karakoram, Pakistan, to photograph K2 for the upcoming feature film The Vertical Limit. He joined David Breashears on the 1996 American expedition to Everest to photograph the two documentaries The Search for Mallory and Irvine and American Firsts -Women on Everest.
Although known for his mountain- and adventure-related subjects, he has worked on a multitude of documentaries ranging from natural history and science to the arts. His photography has appeared in productions for the National Film Board, Discovery, Nova, the BBC and The Learning Channel.
Roger has worked on a number of feature-length dramas for Hollywood, most notably Unforgiven, the 1992 western that was nominated for Best Cinematography and won four Academy Awards including Best Picture. In 1993, he was inducted into the prestigious Canadian Society of Cinematographers. That same year, he was honoured to receive the Bill March Summit of Excellence Award for his ongoing contribution to the mountain community.