Ken Findlay - Leeds Mountaineering Club
27th April 2007

The Sheffield Adventure Film Forum April 21^st – 23^rd 2006

This festival was a celebration of the top three English - speaking mountain film festivals from around the world (Kendal, Banff and Telluride) featuring 45 adventure films, held at the Showroom Cinema in Sheffield. Many of them had won awards in 2005, plus we had a collection of old films reunited on the silver screen. Many of the films shown had already been premiered at other film festivals throughout the world, but to have them all under one roof was a mouth-watering proposition.  The festival was organised by Matt Heason, with the main sponsor of the event being Planet Fear.

The programme was packed with films covering a whole host of adventurous activities such as Climbing, Mountain Biking, Paragliding, BASE Jumping, Skateboarding, Fishing, Slacklining, Bouldering, Surfing and Kayaking to name but a few. There were also some very interesting films on wildlife, culture and the environment.

Best of Kendal 2005, featured three programmes of nine films, which included the very latest Alistair Lee and Dave Halsted project ‘Storms – The movie’, a very funny film which has some great sketches that most climbers can relate to, I particularly enjoyed their spoof on ‘Touching the Void’.

At the other end of the spectrum ‘Dog Town and Z Boys’ described the birth of Skateboarding in the USA, and how the young Californian surfers took over disused swimming pools to develop a whole new era in Skateboarding. I found this film very informative.

I sat through ‘Alone across Australia’ again having seen this film at Sheffield in November. This centred on Jon Muir, probably the world’s most accomplished explorer/adventurer showing his 2,500 km journey across Australia from the south to north coast. A brilliant film, full of blood, sweat and tears.

‘Cannibals and Crampons’ showed two ex army officers setting out to climb a mountain in the jungles of New Guinea, in which they had to travel three months to get to the foot of the mountain. Some gripping scenes especially their first encounter with the cannibals.

Canoeing down the Dudh Kosi and Eric Jones soloing the Eiger made a welcome appearance, as were climbing delights such as ‘Stone Monkey’,’ Hard Grit’, ‘The Bat’ and ‘Touching the Void’.

Some of the best films from the Banff festival were also shown, such as ‘The Magic Mountain’ focusing on Cynthia Hunts’ work with the Health, Environment and Literacy in the Himalayas project in Ladakh.

Films from the Telluride festival  were also represented here, my favourites included ‘The Red Bull Rampage’ showing the birth of Free Ride Mountain Biking, ‘The Man Who Jumped Beneath The Earth’, Eric Jones’ BASE jump into the Cave of Swallows at 67 years of age, ‘Bigger Than Rodeo’, which featured some crazy moves down waterfalls and rapids in a Kayak.

So there you have it, an amazing collection of films showing some great if not unbelievable stunts and feats done in the name of adventure. It allowed me in to parts of the world that I have never visited, and it reaffirmed what a wonderful place we live in and how fragile and delicate our environment is.

Now it’s time to dust off the Mountain Bike and the Skateboard and practice those moves.

Get the stretcher ready!!!

 

Ken Findlay

The Leeds Mountaineering Club

Mick Ryan, UKClimbing.com
22nd May 2006
Incredibly well done on all counts I thought.

You ought to be very proud of yourself.

Shane Ohly, Director of planetFear
19th May 2006
As the title sponsor of ShAFF we were extremely impressed with the organisation of the event and the publicity it received. For a film festival to generate that much interest and crucially ‘bums on seats’ in its first year bodes well for the future. I’m looking forward to next year already!

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