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Hold onto your crampons, tie off your top ropes and tighten your anchor slings, the annual midwinter orgy of mountain culture and adventure is ready to roll back into town.
For the past 27 years, The Banff Center, located in the resort town of Banff in the Canadian Rockies, has held the Banff Mountain Film Festival. Last year’s festival attracted 263 films on mountain culture and sports from 31 countries. For the past 16 years, the festival has sent a selection of the winning films on a world tour, giving dyed-in-the-wool ski bums, extreme adventure enthusiasts and those in-their-dreams, armchair daredevils a taste of the world’s mountain landscapes through the eyes of an international cast of filmmakers.
This year the tour will come to four locations in Maine – Ellsworth, Bangor, Rockport and Portland – offering excitement, exhilaration, escape and enlightenment to those willing to suspend their disbelief for an hour or two.
The films on the tour fall into two categories: mountain culture and mountain sports. They include a portrait of shepherd women in the mountains of northern Pakistan and an up-close look at an avalanche rescue, as well as the take-your-breath-away adventures of real live people who ski, jump and kayak on, through and off mountains, and leap over tall buildings in – well, not leap over tall buildings in a single bound – but yes, climb over tall buildings in downtown Boulder, Colo.
“Urban Ape,” one of the festival highlights, is a 10-minute segment of a longer film called “Front Range Freaks.” It follows renowned climber Tony O’Neill as he climbs over everything in his path in Boulder and Denver followed by filmmaker Peter Mortimer, the producer and director of the film.
In an interview for “Banff Mountain,” the film festival magazine, Mortimer said that “Urban Ape” and the rest of the segments in his film, were about the “carefree, creative side of climbing.” Climbing has become “more sterile” in the last decade, he said, although in his hometown of Boulder, he’s found an eclectic climbing community with “all sorts of wacky characters.”
“That’s what I wanted to tap into for this film – the oddball characters who love climbing so much and have their own uncanned vision of what it means to them,” he told an interviewer. “I guess the common thread through all the climbing in “Front Range Freaks” is that everyone is sticking their neck out a bit – that’s just such an important part of climbing, it’s the emotional part – and it’s so easy to avoid now with all the sanitizing of climbing areas.”
That’s part of the attraction of the traveling film festival which fills theaters in Maine each year, according to Kelly Cochrane, marketing manager for Cadillac Mountain Sports, which sponsors the festival in Bangor and Ellsworth each year. You never know what to expect, but you can always expect to have a good time, Cochrane said.
“You see images that stick with you,” she said. “You just don’t know where you’re going to go or what you’re going to see through these films. But you know it’s not something you’re going to see on Cottage Street or High Street.”
The Cadillac Mountain Sports staff helps to choose which of the traveling films will be shown at the local theaters based on brief clips and written descriptions of the films, which have been selected from among the winners at the 2002 film festival.
Not all the films highlight the wacky side of life in the mountains. Two focus on two mountain enthusiasts who have overcome disabilities in order to pursue their love of the mountains.
“The Second Step,” which won the grand prize at the 2002 festival, is the story of Warren Macdonald’s climb of Federation Peak in Tasmania. The film follows Macdonald – who lost both his legs in a 1997 climbing accident – on the 28-day trek to reach the peak.
“Anamoly” introduces 16-year-old Kevin Connolly, a champion ski racer who was born with no legs, as he prepares for the U.S. Disabled Alpine Championships.
“A Matter of Doubt” is a personal recounting of Jean-Christophe Lafaille’s quest to reach the summit of Annapurna in Nepal, despite his haunting past on the mountain, and the route he and partner Alberto Inurratei have to negotiate to reach their goal.
And “Shepherd Women of Shambala” offers a view into the lives of a small group of Ismail Muslim shepherd women in the rugged passes of the Karakoram mountains in northern Pakistan.
The film festival will have its first showing in Maine at 7 p.m. Feb. 13 at Strom Auditorium at Camden Hills Regional High School in Rockport. The sponsor is Maine Sports Outfitters. For more information, call 236-7120.
On Feb. 14, the film festival will be at the Bangor Opera House in Bangor. Cadillac Mountain Sports is the sponsor. The show starts at 7 p.m. For more information, call 941-5670
The festival will visit the Grand Auditorium in Ellsworth on Feb. 15 and 16, offering mountain culture films on Saturday and mountain sports films on Sunday. Both shows start at 7 p.m. Cadillac Mountain Sports is the sponsor. For more information, call 667-7819, 288-4532, or The Grand, 667-9500
The festival will wrap up in Maine at the State Theatre in Portland on Feb. 17. The show is sponsored by Chestnut Mountain Productions. For more information, call 215- 923-9161. Tickets available at Eastern Mountain Sports at the Maine Mall and Maine Mountain Works on Marginal Way, or at the State Theatre.
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