Banff Film Fest Awards

It´s a curious thing, national pride. In the space of a few months this year two well known climbers on opposite sides of the Atlantic managed to pull off the climb of their lives (so far). The climbs are both sick-hard and turned a serious number of heads. Interestingly both had film crews along to record the process of getting the route done. The films made big splashes. Each is billed as featuring ´the hardest traditional rock climb in the world´. Dave MacLeod on E11 is obviously one, the other being Canadian Sonnie Trotter on Cobra Crack. Why is this newsworthy? Because within the space of a couple of weeks E11 took the grand prize at Edinburgh Mountain Film Festival and Cobra Crack has taken the prize for Best climbing film at the Banff Mountain Film Festival! E11 featured at the Canadian super-festival, but didn´t take a prize despite causing quite a buzz – and with falls like MacLeod´s it would be strange if it didn´t. With ´First Ascent´ and ´Set In Stone´ also in the running for the winter festival accolades it´s most definitely a good year for climbing films! The Grand Prize at Banff went to Conflict Tiger a 61 minute documentary thriller exploring the dark art of tiger hunting in Russia. Best Film on Mountain Environment was won by Cherub Of The Mist, a 53 minute film on the Himalayan Red Panda. Fatima´s Hand (not The Hand Of Fatima, a similarly named film from last year) took The Best Film on Mountain Sports. It is a 38 minute film depicting the epic adventure of a 27 year old Norwegian woman whose plans to climb and BASE jump off a remote Mali tower don´t go according to the book. The Best Film on Climbing went to Return From The Heights with a searching look at French High Altitude mountaineer Marc Batard. Best Film on Mountain Culture went to Balpan, Wings of Altai, a 52 minute documentary about using eagles to help hunt wolves in Mongolia! The People´s Choice Award, always worth a watch, was taken by Asiemut, describing a 56 minute 8,000km cycling epic around Asia. And finally there was a special jury mention for Aweberg and The Giant Buddhas. Expect some of these films to be shown at the Kendal Mountain Film Festival in a couple of weeks time and a Best Of Banff programme will feature at the second ever Sheffield Adventure Film Forum in March next year. Banf Mountain Film Festival ———————————————————————– If you have any news worth reporting please contact Matt – matt@planetfear.com / 0114 2969114 ———————————————————————–

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