Llanberis Mountain Film Festival

A partnership group made up of representatives from the community and business sectors is organising the first Llanberis Mountain Film Festival, incorporating ?The Best of Kendal? Mountain Film Festival and ?The Welsh Edge?, an opportunity for local artists and film-makers to exhibit their work. This exciting event will take place over the weekend of 23rd-24th Feb 2002 at a handful of diverse venues in the Llanberis area, including The Electric Mountain, The Heights Hotel and The Beacon Climbing Wall and the Royal Victoria Hotel.The programme will include a selection of the award-winning films from the Kendal Festival?s last 3 years, as well as presenting new and archive films from film-makers in Snowdonia and its surroundings, some of which will be shown publicly for the first time. In addition, we are inviting speakers from mountain and adventure sports to speak and present slide-shows.Those who have already agreed to attend include Bob Drury, leading adventure paraglider and a former winner of a Kendal Mountain Film award, Boardman-Tasker prize winner, author Paul Pritchard, one of Britain?s leading mountaineers Mick Fowler, and local artist John Redhead, who will give a local premiere of his multimedia oeuvre. The parent festival, which takes place annually in Kendal, Cumbria and originally ran from 1981-1985, restarted three years ago.Attendance grew from 1500 in the first year, to 2500 in the second to 4000 in 2001.The Festival has made a significant contribution to the local economy; the County Council are currently analysing the data, but it seems that on average each visitor spends around £120 during the weekend. We are confident that the Llanberis Festival will achieve a similarly positive reputation, and that the festival should provide a much-needed boost to out of season trade, with local shops, hotels and restaurants benefiting from the extra visitors. The event promises to attract many spectators and participants from all over the country, providing a buzz to Llanberis which, while it is accustomed to being a natural setting as a venue for many outdoor sports, will also offer a range of contrasting experiences which will be of interest to the film enthusiast and mountain lover alike.We will be advertising in both local and national press, and hope to attract a wide audience. The committee which has formed to organise the event (called the ?Llanberis Mountain Film Festival?) consists of five representatives from local community groups and businesses, and has a constitution and a bank account.The group has already been inundated with offers of voluntary support from other community members. The local film society, ?the occasional cinema?, is represented on the Festival committee, and will be bringing their experience in film projection to the event.The society has about 200 members who already actively support film-going in the Llanberis area.

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