Timeline: 50-Years of Mountain Culture

Here are some momentous milestones, key dates, and fun adventures we’ve had over the past 50 years during the Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival! There are literally mountains of memories, but here are a few to share with you for a little journey down memory lane: 

1970s

1976 Bored climbers Chic Scott, Patsy Murphy, Evelyn Moorehouse, and Betty Ware scheme about a mountain film festival in a Banff basement. John Amatt helps them turn their dream into reality and the first festival is held.
1976 The first Festival is held on October 31, 1976. 
1977 The first film competition opens, with 19 entries submitted. 
1978 The Festival becomes a two-day event.

1980s

1981 Best of the Festival Film Tour is launched in partnership with Alpine Club of Canada sections from Ottawa to Victoria. 
1984 Austrian Mountaineer Peter Habeler does a presentation about his and Reinhold Messnerʼs first oxygenless ascent of Everest/Chomolungma.
1987 Introduction of the Summit of Excellence Award. Local photographer Bruno Engler wins.
1988 Bernadette McDonald takes the helm as Festival Director. 
1989 Sir Chris Bonington opens the Festival as guest speaker.

1990s

1990 The Best of the Festival Tour expands from three cities to 38 screenings and 27 cities in Canada and the United States.
1994 The Book Festival is established, and is presented alongside the Film Festival.
1994 UK climber Alison Hargreaves presents Six North Faces of the Alps,  her record-breaking project. She dies tragically the following year on K2.
1996 Catherine Destivelle charms the Banff audience with recollections of her multi-day solo ascents in the Alps. 
1999 “Radical Rides” becomes the Festival's first strictly high-adrenaline program, the prescursor to what is now Radical Reels.

2000s

2000 The Festival celebrates 25 years, hosting a huge event including a mountaineers’ summit. In partnership with National Geographic, the Festival publishes Voices From the Summit: The World’s Great Mountaineers on the Future of Climbing.
2001 The Adventure Filmmakers Workshop is launched as a two-day program.
2003 The Book Festival lineup features Peter Matthiessen and Maria Coffey. Mountaineering classic Touching the Void screens.
2005 The first three-week Mountain Writing Program residency is established.
2009 Canmore filmmaker Leanne Allison presents her film Finding Farley along with husband and adventure partner Karsten Heuer. It wins both People’s Choice and Grand Prize.

2010s

2010 Free soloist Alex Honnold appears on the Banff stage for the first time along with climber Peter Croft.
2012 The first woman to ascend all 8000-metre peaks without supplemental oxygen, Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner, takes to the Banff stage. 
2015 Climbers Alex Honnold and Greg Child arm wrestle on stage during their interview. 
2016 Writer and adaptive climber Paul Pritchard is featured in the annual Voices of Adventure interview. 
2019 The Festival Marketplace moves to the Kinnear Centre, and doubles in size by 2023.

2020s

2020 The Festival pivots to online during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Banff on Demand streaming platform is launched.
2023 Snowboarders Jeremy Jones and Jess Kimura are featured as keynote speakers.
2024 Climber Beth Rodden is interviewed on stage about her book A Light Through the Cracks: A Climber’s Story. At intermission, hundreds of book lovers wait patiently as Rodden signs copies well into the night.
2025 
Celebrating 50 Epic Years! With an attendance of over 21,000 in Banff! 
Fire and Ice Symposium: The Stories We Tell is held in collaboration with the UN International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation.