by Abel Horwitz
Daily Lobo
The 29th annual Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour packed the Highland Theatre last night with everyone from outdoor sports enthusiasts to couch potatoes who've seen perhaps one too many X-Games.
The tour showcases the best independent films about extreme sports and is so popular that this year the festival traveled to every continent - including Antarctica.
"The tour's been great," said Kristi Beetch, the host of the evening's events and an employee of the Banff Center in Alberta, Canada.
The Banff Center has been promoting art and cultural events in a mountain environment for more than 75 years. Every winter, films from all over the world are shown at the weeklong event.
"It's pretty difficult if someone wants to get on the tour," Beetch said. "We're in high demand. When we first started touring, we had to lug around big film reels. Fortunately, though, we're now able to go all around the world as the format's changed. Now everything's on DVD."
She said the format change allowed the tour to make its way onto a cruise ship off the coast of Antarctica.
"It was a tour following the route of (Antarctic explorer Ernest) Shackleton's voyage," she said.
Along with major sponsors of the tour such as National Geographic and Dunham Boot Company, two local companies, Mountains and Rivers and Stone Age Climbing Gym, sponsored the stop in Albuquerque. The sponsors chose which films would be shown.
The films fell into a variety of categories. Rock climbing was displayed in "Psychoblock," a short about two rock climbers who traverse high cliff faces without the aid of ropes or other safety devices. The only thing preventing them from dying if they fell was the ocean, perhaps a hundred feet below. The audience gasped as a climber lunged for far away holds only to miss and plunge into the ocean. The climbers survived and repeated the route.
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Following the daring adventures of the climbers was the People's Choice Award Winner for 2004's festival, "Alone Across Australia."
This hour-long documentary captured Australian Jon Muir as he walked more than 1,500 miles from the southern to the northern coast of the continent. On Muir's 128-day journey, he crossed three deserts and met only a handful of people.
His only companion on the trip was his small Jack Russell terrier, Seraphine.
Muir and a hand-held camera carefully documented the harsh terrain of Australia, showing the constant problems he had finding water and food. The death of his dog late in the journey left Muir entirely alone. The emotional impact of the dog's death stunned the audience.
Nine excellent films were shown. Most of them featured death-defying stunts, everything from skiing steep mountains to leaping across canyons on mountain bikes. Others were simple, such as "Out of Oafrica," which was a video clip of an avalanche as it buried a tiny town.
The love of the outdoors unified these films, displaying the passion each filmmaker has for exploration and adventure.
