Film festival for the fearless

The hills are alive with the sound of adventure – now that Johannesburg joins the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour.

Hosted by Cape Union Mart for the eighth consecutive year, the festival highlights feats of strength and adoration for the world’s mountains.

South Africa is well represented in the festival, with Kerry Wolter from Fourways appearing in one of the short films, Flying with Vultures. Wolter is the founder of VulPro, a programme conserving Cape Vultures. She had the opportunity to parachute among a flock of these birds of prey in the Magaliesberg range at sunset. The footage was used to make a powerful awareness film about the fate of these birds.

This is at the heart of the Banff Mountain Film Festival, which brings the best adventure and outdoor lifestyle documentaries to the big screen.

Filmgoers can expect an array of adventure sports including mountain biking, climbing, alpine skiing and mountain expeditions, in addition to being transported on journeys to experience exotic cultures and some of the world’s last frontiers.

Two highlights this year include the films, Crossing the Ice and Gimp Monkeys. Crossing the Ice is a harrowing film about tackling the perilous journey across Antarctica to the South Pole and back, completely unassisted.

Gimp Monkeys reveals the astonishing accomplishments of three disabled climbing friends in their attempt to complete the first all-disabled ascent of Yosemite’s iconic El Capitan in North America.

Cape Union Mart’s marketing director Evan Torrance said, “The local leg of the tour is (becoming) increasingly popular with South African adventure film fans each year, which is a great confirmation of how passionate South Africans are about the outdoors.”

For the first time this year, the South African leg of the festival will also include the screening of the winner of Cape Union Mart’s Adventure Film Challenge, a local competition aimed at encouraging budding filmmakers to capture South Africa’s outdoor adventure lifestyles.

“We were blown away by the quality of the entries for the Adventure Film Challenge competition this year. We’re hoping that by screening the winning film during the local leg of the tour, we can inspire more local filmmakers to try their hand at producing short films that convey the contrasting adventure landscape in South Africa,” Torrance concluded.

The Banff Mountain Film Festival will be screened at Ster-Kinekor Santon City from 25 October to 1 November.

Details: www.banff.co.za