2009/10 World Tour Films

Over the high ranges of northern Mongolia, a foreign boy is racing on horseback with the local children. Angus is 12 and he's from Australia. He came to Mongolia on vacation the year before and saw children his age racing cross-country in long-distance horse races. He vowed he would one day join them. Angus trained for a year and returned to Mongolia, intent on finding a willing trainer so he too could compete in the big Naadam Festival horse races. This is the heart warming story of a dream that came true.

From the crocodile-infested White Nile in Uganda to big-water first descents in Madagascar, a group of friends seek adventure on African rivers. Accompanying the team is Rita Riewerts, the founder of the Sun Catchers Project, a non-profit that installs solar cooking facilities in orphanages, hospitals and communities.

Four friends set out to open a route up the Trango Pulpit, a mythic 6000-metre tower in Pakistan. Days and days of pleasure, quantities of testosterone expended, frozen fingers, and naps on the wall.

Experience the world of extreme-altitude paragliding, which few humans will ever experience, when high-altitude paragliding pioneer John Silvester takes Alun Hughes on the tandem flight to end all tandem flights. Committed deep into a remote and hypoxic world of snow, ice, and previously unexplored terrain, they find that flying to survive becomes the name of the game. The film demolishes any ideas you may have had of paragliding being about serenely floating around the sky.

The biggest and most difficult challenge of James Pearson's life: a vast blank slab on the Devon sea cliffs. This beautiful but terrifying line takes over his life until finally, sick with nerves and fear, he is ready for this scary lead.

“Shinsetsu” means deep powder in Japanese. This short film expresses a typical day in the mountains in Japan.

When filmmakers Karsten Heuer and Leanne Allison, along with their two-year-old son Zev and indomitable dog Willow, set out to retrace the literary footsteps of Farley Mowat, they meant it literally. Their 5000-kilometre trip — trekking, sailing, portaging and paddling from the Prairies to the Maritimes — is captured in this film. The family’s arrival at their final destination (Mowat's Nova Scotian summer home) is, as Karsten says, “an affirmation of what the land and animals had already told us. Stories aren’t so much written or created as they are released, expressing what’s been there all along.”

After gaining international climbing renown for his landmark free-solo of Moonlight Buttress (V, 5 .12+, 9 pitches) in Zion National Park, Utah, in April 2008, 24-year-old Alex Honnold moves on to his next big challenge: the first free-solo of the Regular Northwest Face (VI, 5 .12a, 23 pitches) on Yosemite’s Half Dome.

Star sport climber Chris Sharma takes on his greatest challenge yet: the unclimbed, 90-metre limestone cave on Mount Clark, California. He dangles from one finger, jumps between minuscule handholds and takes 30-metre free falls as he endeavours to make the first ascent of what will be the most difficult rock climb in the world.

What happens if you show up to climb one of the biggest frozen waterfalls in Canada — but it isn’t completely frozen? Will Gadd and E.J. Plimley battle to do the first ascent of B.C.’s remote Hunlen Falls. Falling ice, crashing water, fear, big fun!

The coolest human-powered adrenaline tool ever invented — the mountain bike? Revolve blasts in cinematic glory from the French Alps to the lush coast of B.C., incorporating dirt jump, trail, freeride, slopestyle and downhill.

Filmed in the Mont Blanc range, this short features six different mountain sports: climbing, skiing, snowboarding, speed riding, paragliding and BASE jumping. A photographer wants to take one shot showing all the sports, instead of taking separate photos of each sport. It takes a lot of work!

Six speed riders fly from the upper slopes of Mont Blanc down to Chamonix in one continuous 10-minute shot, filmed in Cineflex.

Lost in time, the Himalayan kingdom of Mustang is one of the last sanctuaries of authentic Tibetan Buddhist culture. However, long isolated by geography and politics, the people struggle to survive, and the centre of their culture — the 15th-century monasteries and the art within — is dangerously close to collapse. Narrated by Richard Gere and featuring the Dalai Lama, the film tells the compelling story of the efforts to rescue this ancient place from the brink of extinction and to help spark a cultural renaissance.

Take an aerial plunge off the edge of an Arctic coastal headland into the abyss of a seabird colony to find out how marine environmental change is affecting the delicate balance of life for a hardy creature of the northern seas. A visual and metaphorical cliffhanger for our times!

Bruno Kammell, a German engineer, works to perfect the world’s tallest human water slide.

Revolution One takes a look into the history, people, and places that have defined the rapidly emerging sport of off-road unicycling. Follow world champion unicyclists Kris Holm and Dan Heaton as they display riding that has blown the minds of viewers worldwide.

A few years ago, Roz Savage gave up what for many would be an ideal life (husband, great job, big house), picked up a few pairs of rowing oars and a boat to go with them and set off across the Atlantic Ocean — alone — in a rowboat.

Filmed in Canada, India and Tibet, Shining Spirit documents a recording project that brings together the family of Jamyang Yeshi through music and multi-track recording technology. With the help of Western friends, Jamyang, in exile in Canada, and his brother Tsundue, in exile in the U.S., join voices with the family they left behind in Tibet. For the first time in over a decade, they sing together once again. The film is a testament to the power of music, the resilience of the Tibetan culture, and the enduring bond of a family separated by politics and geography.

In Japan there is a cultural connection to the different signatures of our terrestrial home — a sense that the rhythm of fall, winter, spring and summer influences the rhythm of the person, their energy, their riding style and the lines they choose. One of the film's main characters, Yoichi Watanabe, explains: “As a photographer, the change in season brings a change of subject. I have to be ahead of this change in nature, like I have to be thinking about flowers before they actually bloom in order to capture what really goes on. I can say the same about the snow as well.”

In Japan there is a cultural connection to the different signatures of our terrestrial home — a sense that the rhythm of fall, winter, spring and summer influences the rhythm of the person, their energy, their riding style and the lines they choose. This special edit features skiers, snowboarders, a photographer and a noboarder who are each in tune with this connection to winter and the environment they ride in.

On January 11, 2007, Andrew McAuley set out on his quest to become the first person to kayak from Australia to New Zealand across 1600 kilometres of one of the wildest and loneliest stretches of ocean on Earth. Thirty days later, New Zealand maritime authorities received his distress call.

Dominic Gill’s mission is to cycle the 32,000 kilometres from the northern coast of Alaska to the southern tip of South America, on a tandem bike, picking up random strangers on the way. A gripping tale of two years and two continents, full of extraordinary characters and incidents.

This snowboard/ski freeride documentary gives an insight into the world of freeriding through the lens of cameraman Guido Perrini. Featuring some of the world’s best freeriders, including Jeremy Jones, Jonas Emery, and Geraldine Fasnacht, in locations from Alaska and Canada to Chile and Russia, the film delves into the passion, joys, and dangers that are an everyday part of freeriding. From incredible lines to insane avalanches, Ten looks at the behind-the-scenes world of freeride filmmaking.

The final sprint showdown between the fastest skiers on Earth in juxtaposition with a stunt performer showing some of the sickest moves on Nordic skis. A lot of fun!

Paul Pritchard was one of Britain’s most talented and outrageous climbers in the late 1980s. A head injury received while climbing the Totem Pole in Tasmania left Paul with hemiplegia. Now, 13 years on, he makes an emotional return to climbing — on The Rainbow in North Wales. Teaming up with his old climbing partner, the legendary Johnny Dawes, he takes on a 5.10 route. Inspirational.

On a Sunday morning perfect for rock climbing, Hugo attempts one of the hardest and most sought-after climbing routes at the Sugar Loaf in Rio de Janeiro: Uruca. Extremely difficult and dangerous, it will demand all of his skill and concentration.