2017 Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival lineup announced

The Festival showcases nine days of the best in mountain adventure films and books including world premieres and personal appearances by climbers Tommy Caldwell, Nico Favresse and Sean Villanueva O’Driscoll; alpinist Voytek Kurtyka, explorer Huw Lewis-Jones, and Italian mountaineer Tamara Lunger.

This year’s lineup pays homage to world-class adventurers as explained by Deb Smythe, Festival Director:

“One of the most captivating aspects of this Festival is the chance for people to meet their heroes and we are excited to present living legends Sir Chris Bonington and Tommy Caldwell to audiences in Banff.” 

Programming Director, Joanna Croston added: “We pride ourselves in bringing a great deal of variety each year to the Festival and this year’s lineup represents everything in the global community from biologists to mountaineers to archaeologists.”

Schedule Highlights:

October 28 – Sir Chris Bonington

During his illustrious career, Chris Bonington reached the summit of Everest, wrote 17 books and, now in his 80s, is still active in the mountains. The World Premiere of Bonington: Mountaineer, will be followed by an in-depth discussion between Bonington and writer, climber, and psychologist, Geoff Powter.

November 2 – Explorers’ Sketchbooks, Huw Lewis-Jones

Witness the art of exploration across high mountains, barren desserts, and lush rainforests from the 1600s until today—through the sketchbooks of 70 explorers. British historian and award-winning author Lewis-Jones delivers the stunning profiles,expedition details, and artwork of pioneering explorers, ecologists, mapmakers, and anthropologists.

November 3 – World Premiere of Psycho Vertical

Follow Britain’s unlikeliest hero-mountaineer and funny man Andy Kirkpatrick, on an 18-day solo ascent of El Capitan, Yosemite, in the World Premiere of Psycho Vertical – a raw and intimate portrait of one of climbing’s most interesting figures.

November 3 – Tamara Lunger

Born in Southern Tyrol in 1986, Tamara Lunger holds numerous ski mountaineering national titles, is the youngest woman to have reached the summit of Lhotse, and has summited K2 without supplementary oxygen. She joins us to talk about her illustrious career.

November 3 – Nico Favresse, Sean Villanueva O’Driscoll, and The Coconut
Connection

The stars of the 2016 Festival film Dodo’s Delight, Favresse and O’Driscoll always seem to push the harsh realities of life on the big wall aside with the help of a few musical interludes and the occasional bout of humorous, nonsensical behavior. They join us to recount the laughs they had on The Coconut Connection (5.12d), a challenging, big wall route on Baffin Island.

November 4 – Tommy Caldwell

Legendary American rock climber Tommy Caldwell joins us to share his latest accomplishment—a newly published memoir The Push: A Climber’s Journey of Endurance, Risk, and Going beyond Limits which he fine-tuned at Banff Centre under a Paul D. Fleck Fellowship (a fully-funded artistic residency at Banff Centre’s Leighton Artist Colony, giving time and space to accomplished artists to realize their projects) in 2016.

Notable authors in attendance for this year’s Banff Mountain Book Festival include Steve Swenson (Karakoram: Climbing Through the Kashmir Conflict), Gudrun
Pflüger (Wolf Spirit: A Story of Healing, Wolves and Wonder), and Kevin Vallely (Rowing the Northwest Passage).

For images please visit www.banffcentre.ca/images

For more information on the 2017 Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival lineup, please visit www.banffmountainfestival.ca.