October 20, 1999

USA and Canada Lead the Way as 1999 Banff Mountain Film Festival Finalists

American and Canadian producers have taken the lead in this year's Banff Mountain Film Festival competition with nine and six films each chosen as finalists by a pre-screening committee. The films were selected from 138 entries representing twenty-two countries.

"This year's film finalists are outstanding," says Bernadette McDonald, Director of the Banff Centre for Mountain Culture, which produces the event. "The powerful stories of these films reflect a wide range of mountain experiences and portraits - from climbing and other mountain sports, to mountain culture and the environment."

An international jury (bios included below) will meet in early November to select the winners in four categories. They will also select a Grand Prize Winner, while festival audience members will vote on a People's Choice award. Winners will be announced on Sunday, November 7 at 7:30 p.m.at the awards ceremony at the end of the festival which runs November 5-7. A list of finalists is included.

The 1999 Banff Mountain Film Festival Jury:

Kitty Calhoun, USA
Kitty Calhoun began climbing at the age of 18 on the crags of her native South Carolina and later, at college in Vermont, added ice climbing to her skills. In 1984, she ventured to the Cordillera Blanca in Peru. Soon afterwards she turned her attention to the Himalaya. A two-person attempt on Thalay Sagar in the Garwhal was defeated by hunger and exhaustion after an eight-day storm that pinned the climbers on the face. In 1987, however, she successfully climbed Dhaulagiri alpine-style with two other team members; three years later, she led a successful expedition to the West Pillar of Makalu. Since then, she has led an attempt to climb the north ridge of Latok I in Pakistan and has climbed big walls in Kyrgyzstan. In 1997, she climbed a new route on the west face of Middle Triple Peak in Alaska, and in 1998 she attempted a new route on the west face of Latok III. Calhoun is a parent, earned an MBA degree from the University of Washington, has been a guide since 1982 and works for The North Face.

Dr. Thomas Hornbein, USA
Raised in St. Louis, Missouri, Tom Hornbein took up climbing in a serious way while studying geology the University of Colorado. His experiences with mountain rescue and teaching first aid led to a degree in medicine from Washington University and sparked an interest in the physiology of breathing and high-altitude adaptation. Throughout his career, Hornbein's research has focused on the stimuli that prompt animals to breathe; his studies have yielded over a hundred journal articles and book chapters. During his medical training, Hornbein continued his mountaineering, including trips to Alaska and the Himalayas. In May of 1963, he and Willi Unsoeld became the first climbers to ascend Mount Everest via the West Ridge as part of the first American expedition to Everest. Since then, Hornbein's climbing activities have included Paiju and Masherbrum La (1974), Ulugh Mustagh (1985), 23,00-foot Kangkarpo (1988, 1989) and Long's Peak in Colorado (1995, 1996), in addition to daily ascents to his 14th-floor office.

Leo Houlding, UK
Leo Houlding started climbing with his father in the English Lake District when he was 10 years old. Nine months later, he became the youngest person to freeclimb an exposed Scottish sea stack in the Orkney Isles called the Old Man of Hoy. As a junior, Houlding competed on plastic. He won the 1994 Birmingham World Cup and the 1996 British Indoor Climbing Competition. Soon, however, he decided that international competitions were a far cry from rock climbing; he now claims to want to "spend the foreseeable future freeclimbing fierce new free lines in far-out locations." In September of 1998, Houlding and climbing partner Patch Hammond climbed a route on El Cap called El Niña. It was their first big wall, and Houlding climbed the 30-pitch 5.13c virtually on sight. He is now completely committed to big-walling. Leo's philosophy for climbing and life is simple: "Don't take it too seriously, life might be too short".

Audrey Salkeld, UK
A highly respected and experienced mountaineering writer and historian, Audrey Salkeld is the author of The Mystery of Mallory and Irvine (with Tom Holzel) and People in High Places, and translator of books by Reinhold Messner and Kurt Diemberger. In 1996, her accounts of the tragic events on Everest that spring, written while she was working as a reporter with the IMAX Everest Expedition, were broadcast by Nova Online. Also in 1996, her book A Portrait of Leni Riefenstahl won the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature. She has also written scripts for television documentaries and edited a number of anthologies, including Great Climbs with Chris Bonington.

Junko Tabei, Japan
First attracted to climbing at the age of 10, Japan's Junko Tabei began climbing in earnest in 1962 after graduating from Showa Women's University with a degree in English literature. Since then, she has had a wide-ranging mountaineering career, climbing over seventy major peaks around the world. She is perhaps best known as the first woman to summit Everest (1975); in 1992, she became the first woman to reach the summits of the highest peaks on all seven continents. Tabei has received numerous awards, including the Gurkha Dakshina Bahu, the highest award in Nepal, and currently directs the Himalayan Adventure Trust of Japan, an organization dedicated to the preservation of the mountain environment.

Best Film on Climbing - Finalists

• Annapurna - A Look Back; Lee Goss, USA
• Bonington's Secret Mountain: Episode 7; Martin Belderson/Chris Lister, UK
• Freya - Honeymoon on a Big Wall; Jochen Schmoll, Germany
• Il était une voie Edlinger [Once upon an Edlinger Climb]; Gilles Chappaz/France 3 Montagne, France
• Le Dolomiti di Pietro; Fulvio Mariani/Enzo Pelli, Switzerland
• Lost on Everest [festival version]; Liesl Clark/WGBH, USA
• The Making of Extreme: Rock Climbing; Jon Long, Canada
• The Mountains of Yesterday; Guillermo Campo/Jesus Bosque, Spain
• National Geographic Explorer: Hitting the Wall; Andrew Carl Wilk/Michael Rosenfeld/David Hamlin, USA
• Oceans of Fear; Nic Good/Charles Standing, South Africa
• Passe-moi les jumelles!: Premier de cordée, La grande crevasse - Le film des films [Pass Me the Binoculars!: Leader on the Rope, The Big Crevasse - The Making of the Films]; Benoît Aymon/Claude Delieutraz/Pierre-Pascal Rossi, Switzerland
• Stone Soup; Janet Rodden/Julia Barrick Taffe, Canada
• Wild Climbs: Tasmania; Richard Else, UK
• Wild Climbs: Colorado; Richard Else, UK

Best Film on Mountain Culture - Finalists

• East Meets West - Mongolian Cowboys; Debra Karls/John Armstrong/John Wilcox, USA
• Millennium; Francesco Santullo/Grivelart, Italy
• Their Home Is below Kanchenjunga; Pavol Barabas, Slovakia
• Ushguli; Jean Boggio Pola/Jean-Pierre Bailly, France
• Vision Man; William Long/Lars Åby, Sweden

Best Film on Mountain Environment - Finalists

• Darwin's Evolutionary Stakes; Andrew Horne/Deborah Szapiro, Australia
• Denali - Land of the High One; Andrew Manske/Ava Karvonen, Canada
• The Magic Trees of Assam; Paul Reddish/ORF; Austria
• Mockumentary; Mark Stanger, Canada
• Satoyama; Mitsuhiko Imamori/NHK, Japan
• Voyage au coeur de la Fournaise; Rémy Tézier, France

Best Film on Mountain Sport - Finalists

• 118 Days in Captivity of Ice; Pavol Barabas, Slovakia
• Belly Boat Hustle; Sandra Sawatsky, Canada
• Exotica; Dirk Collins, Todd Jones, Steve Jones, USA
• Free BASE - The Depth of Air; J. Ruby/M. Marchand/S. Beaugey; France
• From Nowhere to the Middle of Nowhere; Alun Hughes, UK
• Kiwi Wildwater - Women's Heli-kayaking in New Zealand; Debra Karls/John Wilcox, USA
• National Geographic Explorer: Tragedy on the Tsangpo; Simon Boyce/David Royle/National Geographic Explorer, USA
• New World Disorder; Jeff Lawrence/Derek Westerlund, Canada
• Soul Pilot; Dominique Perret/Rob Bruce/Vertical Zoo, Switzerland
• Traverse in the Land of Ayacara; Michael Brown/John Wilcox, USA
• True Fans; Dan Austin, USA

To order tickets for the seminar or other festival events, contact the ticket line at 403-762-6675, or 1-800-298-1229.

Debra Hornsby, Marketing and Communications Manager,
  Mountain Culture, The Banff Centre
phone: 403-762-6446, fax: 403-762-6277,
email: debra_hornsby@banffcentre.ca
Web site: www.banffmountainfestivals.ca

The 24th Annual Banff Mountain Film Festival is presented by Eagle Creek Travel Gear, and sponsored by Moonstone/Gore, the National Geographic Society, Polartec, Salomon Footwear, Sierra Designs Outerwear, and Air Canada, with assistance from Ski Lake Louise, Electrohome and MountainZone.com.