Jeb Corliss

The Banff Film Festival wrapped up Sunday night with an awards ceremony and dance party (the winners are announced below). Banff director Shannon O'Donoghue, Jill Sawyer, and crew put on a great show (the festival was 90% sustainable this year), bringing in an incredible assortment of adventurers and filmmakers to speak and debut films. Austrian climber Peter Habeler showed classic footage from his 1978 climb with Reinhold Messner up Everest—they were the first two climbers to summit without oxygen—saying that Messner was "bitter" at the time because he was going through a divorce. The warm and charming Habeler was the more cautious of the two, revealing that Messner pushed them on.
American Alpine Club President Jim Donini talked about his ascent of Patagonia's Cerro Torre and boldly told the audience that there's no way Italian climber Cesare Maestri made the first ascent in 1959 as Maestri claimed. And the sage photographer and environmentalist Jon Waterman was at Banff to talk about his work in the Arctic Refuge, which he thinks has a real shot at being preserved now with the new administration. His gorgeous photos from the refuge were on display.
As for films, there was everything from palm sweatin' adventure to portraits of lost cultures. The movie Journey to the Center nearly gave me a heart attack; it's about a dangerous BASE jump into a deep cave in China featuring Jeb Corliss. Corliss was at the festival and says his next mission is to be the first human to use only a wingsuit to fly and land safely. He's working with NASA on the project. He showed me photos of himself swimming with big ole great white sharks in Baja, without a cage. In one photo, he was "petting" a 16-foot shark. He next plans to swim with hippos and crocodiles in Africa. He says he doesn't have a death wish, but that pushing up against fear and death "makes him realize how much he wants to live." Alrighty then.
The film The Sharp End, which explores climbers pushing the limits of what's humanly possible, also made my palms sweat. Infamous solo free climber Dean Potter is now occasionally free climbing some of the more difficult routes with a parachute on his back in case he falls. And Jamie Houssian's Season's showed heart-thumpin' mountain biking footage with today's stars.
Red Gold was a festival-goer favorite, and filmmakers Travis Rummel and Ben Knight were in town to introduce it. It's about the culture of salmon fishing in Bristol Bay, Alaska, which is being threatened by a proposed copper mine. The footage is stunning, the characters poignant.
Michael Brown, from Serac Adventure Films—who offers an annual farflung adventure filmmaking trip— was helping with a weeklong adventure filmmakers' workshop at Banff. Word on the street was that the week's most hilarious student footage was of climber Timmy O'Neill. If we're lucky, maybe O'Neill will post some of it on his web site.
And the winners at the festival are:
1) The Grand Prize: The Last Nomads, which follows linguist Ian Mackenzie into Borneo's jungle to track one of the last existing hunter-gatherer tribes, whose way of life is being threatened by logging.
2) Best Feature Length Film: Stranded, in which Gonzalo Arijon freshly revisits the story made famous by Alive of the Uruguayan rugby players who survived a plane crash in the Andes.
3) Best Climbing Film: Committed 2: Grit Kids, another climbing palm sweater.
4) Best Short Mountain Film: If You're Not Falling, about Canadian Sonnie Trotter on a climbing trip in Scotland.
5) Best Film on Mountain Culture: Tracking the White Reindeer, by director Hamid Sardar, set in northern Mongolia.
6) Best Film on Mountain Environment: The Meadow, which creatively shows the workings of a mountain meadow.
7) Best Film on Mountain Sport: Journey to the Center (cited above) about a dangerous BASE jump into a deep cave in China.
8) The People's Choice Award went to Red Gold (cited above).
For more award information, check out Banff's winner list.