15 th Filmfest St. Anton. Berge, Menschen, Abenteuer

25. - 29. August 2009
Festival website:   http://www.filmfest-stanton.at/.

Reviewed by Martha Blassnigg and Katharina Blassnigg
University of Plymouth / University for Music and Applied Arts Vienna

martha.blassnigg(at)gmail.com / kblassnigg(at)gmail.com

Mountain film festivals, or alpine film festivals, have been founded as specialist events that showcase mediations of life on mountains that range from human encounters, sports and adventures to landscape panorama's from bird's eye views, animal life documentaries to animation and other artistic films on the topic (see for example the festivals associated with the International Alliance for Mountain Film http://www.mountainfilmalliance.org/ ). In the literature, especially film studies, the term 'mountain film' often centres around the genre of the German Bergfilm , emerging in the 1920s around famous figures such as Franck, Riefenstahl, Trenker, etc. Today it refers to both fiction film or docu-fiction, and frequently stage biographical real-life stories. These include the various film versions on the drama during one of the first attempts to climb the Eiger Nordwand in 1936 such as Joe Simpson's The Beckoning Silence as docu-drama (Louise Osmond, 2007) following the production of MacDonald's Touching the Void (2003) of Simpson' and Yates' drama in the Andes (which was Oscar nominated and won the BAFTA award in 2003 for Best British Movie). Historically, to obtain a mediated experience as closely to real-life as possible, alpinists and mountaineers themselves have been experimenting with audio-visual mediation, from expedition drawings and photography to, more recently, film and video by some mountaineers who were trained and experienced in both or several disciplines (e.g. Vittorio Sella, Hans Ertl, Gerhard Baur, David Breashears, Robert Schauer, etc.). Many of these films still are accompanied by a certain myth, of personal spirit of adventure and conquest, whereas entire film-crews as well as the filmed individuals are specialised in the filmmaking in these extreme conditions. Their achievements are in some way reminiscent of Dziga Vertov's innovations and revelations in Man with a Movie Camera from a creative point of view -- for an historical example of this see Hans Ertl's extraordinary photography and self-reflective style in Nanga Parbat, documenting the first summit climb of the Nanga Parbat in 1935 featuring Hermann Buhl's famous achievement through experimental simulation. In mountain documentaries or docu-dramas, cameras are frequently attached to ski lifts, helicopters, helmets or other extensions to provide the most astonishing, thrilling and novel perspectives, but often rely on the specialised combination of climbers filming and acting in these extreme circumstances. The mountain film (understood in this broad sense) excites broad audiences especially through the mediation of experiences that remain inaccessible for many; it ventures into extremities of possible encounters and borderlines of human endeavours and draws attention to a particular combination of specialist human training and ability with innovative technologies and materials.

The Filmfest St. Anton recognises this particular virtue and has established an annual event of a particular kind. It has become a showcase, platform and a broad network for encounters and exchanges between, in the words of the organisers, "hardcore sports and mountain fanatics" and those audiences who share a fascination with human endeavours in extreme conditions, where physical, mental, cultural and experiential human boarders are explored, crossed, superseded and challenged. They include various sport genres such as bouldering, climbing, free skiing, free riding, alpine expeditions. The Filmfest is also dedicated to support young sports talents in the combination of innovative, adventurous projects and the mediation of their experiences through the medium film / cinema. As a consequence it provides a unique platform for a niche that also supports various dimensions that go along with the filmmaking in these extreme environments and manages to remain free of the familiar   exclusivities of juries and awards. Set in the famous skiing resort of St. Anton am Arlberg, in the North-West of Tirol (Austria), the festival has over the years settled on a form with a manageable size of five rich and diverse evening programmes, an exhibition and various discussions and talks with invited sports/mountaineering experts, film protagonists and filmmakers. This year's programme was especially dedicated to the celebrities Dean Potter, Beat Kammerlander, Markus Bendler und Gerhard Baur, all of whom were present at the festival along with other invited guests while rock climbing, boulder and ice-climbing workshops were offered by Beat Kammerlander, Angela Eiter, Bernd Zangerl and Markus Bendler (see http://www.arlrock.at/ ). The films that were shown came from the USA, the UK, Italy, Switzerland, Slovenia, Canada, Australia, Germany and Austria.

The film program of the Filmfest this year comprised evenings that were dedicated to a great variety of film forms and approaches. These ranged from short films to feature length, fiction, docu-fiction, documentary, artistic/animation films to personal film diaries and essays. The courage of this mix was balanced with moderated introductions to each film along with accompanying podium discussions and talks, which positioned each film on its own terms within the festival remit. What the Filmfest in this way achieved was a rich program for a broad audience without loosing the focus of the event: to bring mountain professionals and enthusiasts together to meet, share, exchange, enjoy and relive some of the most memorable adventures in the higher regions of our planet. Whilst the festival's programme committee does not exclude fiction films ( Cliffhanger for example was shown in an earlier edition of the festival) and is particularly fond of animation films, the festival tries to avoid the hype of the big screen and support rare as well as small productions of mediated extraordinary human experiences in mountain sports and extreme alpine conditions. Rather than assuming a sensationalist bias, the unique shots of breathtaking achievements and adventures in the selected programme of the Filmfest tended to culminate in the surfacing of the human condition during these encounters and events: the very aspirations, motivations, the physical, mental/psychological conditions, dreams and passions as driving forces behind the very happenings. The fact that technology is constantly reinvented, reinterpreted and expanded is part of this and constitutes the daily bread in extreme sports documentation and has been an influential terrain in the development of audio-visual technologies. These stand at the edges of industry norms   such as expeditions in the Himalayas and other extreme environments, visual anthropology, sports documentary, or independent productions.

Whilst the festival organising committee is careful in selecting not only interesting content but also high quality forms of presentation and communication through audio-visual media, central to the festival are people, individuals and their experiences, motivations, fascinations, passions and achievements in the mountains. This was evident this year in examples such as a biographical documentation on coping with grief after loosing a family member during a Himalaya expedition, a sponsored charity sports event by two famous champions in a unique combination of two sports disciplines, a monitored real-time adrenaline-test during the descent of free-riders or a historically informed documentary on the famous 1936 climb of the Eiger Nordwand. One of this year's acclaimed festival's highlights was the screening of Making of ... "Mount St. Elias", a 26 mins masters-cut by Gerald Salmina of the making of the documentary, released as Vertical Rush in the cinemas this year, on the first, and longest, ski-descent of the second highest mountain of the USA, from the summit of Mount Elias to the Golf of Alaska featuring Axel Naglich, Peter Ressmann and Jon Johnston. A unique independent production was Aria by Davide Carrari with climbing scenes shot by means of an especially constructed micro-camera attached to the helmet of one of the top European all-round climbers, Piedro Dal Pra. A special treat for the film and genre specialists was the screening of a historic film held in the Museo Nazionale della Montagne in Turin, featuring the first filmed expedition to the Karakorum in 1909, commissioned by H.R.H. Prince Luigi Amadeo of Savoy Duke of the Abbruzzi and made by the alpinist and photographer Vittorio Sella. This inclusion of what was positioned as cultural dimension of the program, reveals the crucial link between contemporary experiments with AV-media in extreme environments and the products of some of the early pioneering film productions at a time when the film business had just started to become standardized and comprised a great range of technologies, forms and exhibition formats to serve a great variety of tastes, expectations and styles. Particularly relevant for the context of the 'mountain film' is the fact that cinema from its outset was not only international and innovative in the development of the novel technologies of the moving image and projection technologies, but also profoundly interested in the expansion of the limits of what was considered perceptible by the human senses. By taking up the legacy of early photographic and mountaineering pioneers such as Sella's, the Filmfest shows its grounding not only in a well-informed understanding of the roots of the present in the past, but moreover the fact that any achievement in extreme conditions has to be understood on its own terms.

What would have been interesting for the film specialist would be more specific information about the various film formats in the program, both on which format the original film was shot and on which format it was screened. However, since the Filmfest is organised so that all attention is devoted to one screening room in order to keep the event as a focused and inclusive happening   there is always a a good chance to catch the filmmakers / protagonists / producers after the sessions to gain in-depth insights into the 'making-of'. This accessibility also speaks for the relaxed and accessible atmosphere that the festival offers, where the spotlight embraces stars, newcomers and cinephiles alike. The location of the festival (slightly off the main travel routes on the East-West tangent of the Inntal) , and being one of the few mountain film festivals in the region set during the summer period, encourages visitors to combine the festival with some first-hand mountain experience -- in the specialist workshops of the Filmfest or the Alps surrounding the location which offer a spectrum from leisure hiking to extreme climbing.