Hold on to your seat: Banff films are coming
Adventure, humor, awareness and awe, plus a good dose of pucker factor are coming to Spokane next weekend in a road show of top films from the recent Banff Mountain Film Festival.
The festival’s World Tour will present different outdoor films each evening – Friday, Saturday and Sunday – at the Bing Crosby Theater.
Mountain biking, climbing, backcountry skiing, paragliding, fishing and mountain culture are among the featured attractions that caught the eye of Mountain Gear’s Phil Bridger, who coordinates the Spokane stop for a tour that will continue nearly a year to 285 communities and 30 countries.
“The festival is getting pickier,” said Bridgers, who attended the 33rd annual view-’til-you-spew main event in Alberta during the second week in November. “All the films I saw this year are super high-quality, even though a lot of the filmmakers didn’t have money behind them.
“More people are out there shooting video and with all the new editing tools they have, they keep raising the bar.”
The Spokane stop for the World Tour will show more films than most venues. Still, the tour brings only about 7 percent of the 263 films entered in this year’s festival competition.
“If there’s a trend, I’d say there’s a little less hucking-off-a-cliff-type stuff and maybe a tendency to focus more on the environment this year,” Bridgers said. “But I tell you, the films are fantastic. People are out there in some sketchy situations.”
Although films can be added or subtracted from the World Tour at the last moment, here are Bridger’s top picks for films to show in Spokane:
“Journey to the Center,” named the festival’s Best Film on Mountain Sports, features thrillseekers plunging into the largest natural hole in the planet.
Last year, a film followed climbers into a mind-boggling deep cave. This year, filmmakers delve into a hole in China big and deep enough to lure BASE jumpers.
“This film conveyed what it is really like to participate in an extreme sport, and the real emotions of athletes, without exaggerating,” said Christian Trommsdorff, one of the film festival judges. “It’s not just a film about an ego trip.”
“If You’re Not Falling,” named the best short mountain film tells a whole story of desire, failure and triumph in eight minutes.
Canadian rock jock Sonnie Trotter heads to Scotland to do battle on another “hardest rock climb in the world.”
As each day passes, he logs more and more air time in 50-foot falls from the steep rock buttress that plunges beneath a castle.
“He works a horrendous 5.14 route and instead of top roping and taking little falls as he works it out, he does everything from the ground up,” Bridgers said.
“Well, if you’re not falling, you’re not trying,” observes Trotter.
“Seasons,” special jury award winner, features 24 minutes of hot action as world-class mountain bikers reveal how they stay tuned year-round for a competitive sport that has no off-season.
“Cameramen fling down the slopes hanging from a cable to follow the downhill racers,” Bridgers said, noting that so much mud flies, viewers might need to take a shower.
“Red Gold,” the festival’s People’s Choice winner, is a compelling documentary by a pair of twentysomethings who venture to Alaska to probe both sides of the Pebble Mine controversy.
At the headwaters of Bristol Bay’s Kvichak and Nushagak rivers – the two largest remaining sockeye salmon runs on earth – mining companies have proposed to extract what may be the richest deposit of gold and copper in the world.
The film – also the audience favorite at the Telluride Film Festival – is a portrait of a unique way of life, both for fun and subsistence, that would not exist if salmon didn’t return with Bristol Bay’s tide.
An Outside magazine reviewer said this is an example of an environmental film that “gets the entertainment/inspiration balance right.”
“It’s the only film I saw that got a standing ovation at Banff,” Bridgers said.
“Psyche: Patagonian Winter,” is a comedy born from the suffering of two Brits who think they can outsmart conventional wisdom by attempting the first winter ascent of Torre Egger.
Apparently they hadn’t seriously considered why a winter ascent had not yet been made.
“This is 30 minutes of laughing at these guys torturing themselves in appalling conditions,” Bridgers said.
“The Red Helmet,” just six minutes long, is a “cute and creative film,” said Bridgers. A boy finds a magic helmet and goes on the adventure of a lifetime that helps him overcome his fears.
“Flying with Eagles,” follows a two-time world paragliding champion as she teams with a Russian eagle over Scotland to learn how and where the master gains altitude without so much as a beat of his wings.
“Unbearable Lightness of Skiing,” documents the toil of climbing peaks to make daring ski descents in the Selkirk Range of British Columbia.
“This isn’t a Warren Miller huckfest movie,” Bridgers said. “It’s more story-oriented. A real backcountry adventure.”
“Chadar – The Ice Trail,” follows a high-altitude tribe in the Indian Himalaya, as they negotiate a treacherous frozen river, their only link to the outside world for eight months of the year.