Banff Mountain Film Festival Festival Theatre Edinburgh 27th January 2024 Review
Banff Mountain Film Festival UK & Ireland Tour 2024 (part of the world tour) had two different film screenings at the Festival Theatre Edinburgh today, in the afternoon, the blue programme and this evening, the red programme. This review is for the red programme.
As always, Banff Mountain Film Festival offers a carefully curated programme of different adventures from around the world and films ranging from short to longer features. Tonight’s six films each had their own unique identity and voice. Always unifying all of these films together are the images of the wonders that are around us in the natural world and the very special people that for whatever reason are a little bit more connected to them in body and spirit than most of us are.
The longest film in this programme (41 minutes) “Chronoception” by filmmaker Guillaume Broust was over two years in the making with over a year of that time spent in post-production. The end result is an outdoor adventure film with a cinematic storytelling approach to it that explores not only the physical demands that gaining access to a remote part of the world takes on the human body, but also the psychological effects that can take place on a person’s mind, and in particular how their perception of the passage of time itself can alter. This film is an interesting look at how we actually perceive time and our limited attempts at measuring it. What are we even measuring – mechanical time (timepieces), solar and lunar time, geological time, biological time, cosmological time? They all seem to be very different things and even our own experience of time itself can change.
The Tien Shan mountains, on the Kyrgyzstan-China border are clearly from this film wonders of nature and the landscape around them is breath-taking, but the journey to and from the mountains is a slow and laborious one. The prize for the skiers and snowboarders willing to reach these mountains and their summits is a brief descent of compressed time that will stay in their memories forever.
Sadly, we may all too soon lose too much of Kyrgyzstan’s natural wonders as it is rich in the rare minerals that are needed in the production of Lithium batteries. The world’s green environmental revolution is coming at a very heavy price to the natural world.
One of the more interesting films in this programme that explores the strength of will of the human spirit itself was “Soundscape”. Featuring Erik Weihenmayer, a fully blind adventure athlete and rock climber, this was an inspiring story of how one man faced with becoming blind refused to let this restrict his love of the world around him. Instead of allowing this to happen, Erik Weihenmayer not only had the courage to say goodbye to parts of his old life that he could not now do, but to embrace a new life that focused on sound as his primary way of understanding the world around him.
All too often we forget that in order to experience many of the adventures in the natural world that Banff Mountain Festival celebrates with us all, special equipment and clothing is often required to keep everyone as safe as possible on their respective fields of endeavour. Behind the scenes are often designers and skilled crafts people often known only to a small circle of people within their respective disciplines.
Sheri Tingey is one such designer and here we follow her own journey from designing ski wear to initially meet the demands of her own love of skiing to, almost by accident, designing inflatable boats and kayaks that are the go-to equipment for many water loving adventurers. Weaving its way through this very personal film is Sheri’s own battle with being diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome whilst only in her mid 30s.
What drives climbers to have an almost symbiotic relationship with not only rock face, but the most difficult to climb one that they can find is something that I suppose only climbers understand. Here in “Reel Rock: DNA”, French climber Seb Bouin and his mother Claire (a highly skilled climber in her own right) give us an insight into this world as one of the world’s most difficult climbing routes across a limestone rockface in France’s Verdon Gorge is slowly mastered.
There is always an element of lighter moments in some of the films in any Banff Mountain Film Festival and here that is covered with mountain biking and “Cross Countries” and the almost insane idea to create the new sport of Tandem XC Skiing in “Pioneers”.
These are six very different films that give us all an insight into the apparently endless possibilities of adventure and wonder that one small planet can offer to us all if we are brave enough to take those first few steps outside of the confines of our own everyday world.
Review by Tom King © 2024
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
As always, Banff Mountain Film Festival offers a carefully curated programme of different adventures from around the world and films ranging from short to longer features. Tonight’s six films each had their own unique identity and voice. Always unifying all of these films together are the images of the wonders that are around us in the natural world and the very special people that for whatever reason are a little bit more connected to them in body and spirit than most of us are.
The longest film in this programme (41 minutes) “Chronoception” by filmmaker Guillaume Broust was over two years in the making with over a year of that time spent in post-production. The end result is an outdoor adventure film with a cinematic storytelling approach to it that explores not only the physical demands that gaining access to a remote part of the world takes on the human body, but also the psychological effects that can take place on a person’s mind, and in particular how their perception of the passage of time itself can alter. This film is an interesting look at how we actually perceive time and our limited attempts at measuring it. What are we even measuring – mechanical time (timepieces), solar and lunar time, geological time, biological time, cosmological time? They all seem to be very different things and even our own experience of time itself can change.
The Tien Shan mountains, on the Kyrgyzstan-China border are clearly from this film wonders of nature and the landscape around them is breath-taking, but the journey to and from the mountains is a slow and laborious one. The prize for the skiers and snowboarders willing to reach these mountains and their summits is a brief descent of compressed time that will stay in their memories forever.
Sadly, we may all too soon lose too much of Kyrgyzstan’s natural wonders as it is rich in the rare minerals that are needed in the production of Lithium batteries. The world’s green environmental revolution is coming at a very heavy price to the natural world.
One of the more interesting films in this programme that explores the strength of will of the human spirit itself was “Soundscape”. Featuring Erik Weihenmayer, a fully blind adventure athlete and rock climber, this was an inspiring story of how one man faced with becoming blind refused to let this restrict his love of the world around him. Instead of allowing this to happen, Erik Weihenmayer not only had the courage to say goodbye to parts of his old life that he could not now do, but to embrace a new life that focused on sound as his primary way of understanding the world around him.
All too often we forget that in order to experience many of the adventures in the natural world that Banff Mountain Festival celebrates with us all, special equipment and clothing is often required to keep everyone as safe as possible on their respective fields of endeavour. Behind the scenes are often designers and skilled crafts people often known only to a small circle of people within their respective disciplines.
Sheri Tingey is one such designer and here we follow her own journey from designing ski wear to initially meet the demands of her own love of skiing to, almost by accident, designing inflatable boats and kayaks that are the go-to equipment for many water loving adventurers. Weaving its way through this very personal film is Sheri’s own battle with being diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome whilst only in her mid 30s.
What drives climbers to have an almost symbiotic relationship with not only rock face, but the most difficult to climb one that they can find is something that I suppose only climbers understand. Here in “Reel Rock: DNA”, French climber Seb Bouin and his mother Claire (a highly skilled climber in her own right) give us an insight into this world as one of the world’s most difficult climbing routes across a limestone rockface in France’s Verdon Gorge is slowly mastered.
There is always an element of lighter moments in some of the films in any Banff Mountain Film Festival and here that is covered with mountain biking and “Cross Countries” and the almost insane idea to create the new sport of Tandem XC Skiing in “Pioneers”.
These are six very different films that give us all an insight into the apparently endless possibilities of adventure and wonder that one small planet can offer to us all if we are brave enough to take those first few steps outside of the confines of our own everyday world.
Review by Tom King © 2024
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
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