 
The 20th annual Banff Festival of Mountain Films is a wrap for another year. Closing
the weekend-long celebrations was the announcement by the international
jury of winners in the categories of Grand Prize, Best Film on Climbing,
Mountain Sports, Mountain Culture, Mountain Environment and the Bill
Roberts Award for Young Filmmakers.
Topping the award list was Grand Prize winner Behind the Ice Wall,
a German production by Directors Peter Getzels and Harriet Gordon. The film travels to the
very heart of a pristine ancient kingdom in northern India called Zanskar. Here the most
ancient form of Tibetan Buddhism is still practised, and the children of the valley are
portrayed taking their first steps towards a modern world.
Best Film on Climbing went to Canadian director and producer Bill
Noble for his documentary Child of the Wind. Based on the wilderness adventure
legacy of Canadian Coast Mountain explorer John Clarke, the film recounts Clarke's many
first ascents and solo traverses of the remote Coast Mountain terrain on foot and
skiis.
Bruce Cockburn and Sylvie supply the musical score.
Australia's A Glorious Way to Die took the award for Best Film on
Mountain Sports. Directed by Richard Dennison and produced by Martin Guinness,
the film follows a team of whitewater rafters in the Altai Mountains of Siberia as they
return to the place where four of their comrades died 12 months before. In re-creating the
accident with an international team, the film analyses why these men feel the need to
tackle such outrageously dangerous rapids and why so many die in the attempt.
Best Film on Mountain Environment went to the American entry Avalanche!
produced by National Geographic and Okapi Productions. Snow avalanches inspire terror,
admiration and awe in anyone who has seen or experienced one. Director Tom Casciato
explores how forecasters, highway workers, helicopter bombers, skiers and snowmobilers
experience the mighty power of one of nature's most dramatic forces.
Gauthier Flauder and Philippe Gildas of France won the Best Film on Mountain
Culture with Lalibela. High on the Ethiopian high plains, 2700 metres
above sea level, an incredible hidden sanctuary exists within Mount Ashton. Twelve
churches were carved from the red stone walls of the mountain by King Lalibela, who
dreamed of creating his own Jerusalem to last forever. This small Christian island in the
middle of Islam shows that the faith of the pilgrims is as strong as the stone of
Lalibela.
The Bill Roberts Award for Young Filmmakers was established in 1994 to
recognize an extra-ordinary young producer who demonstrates the best spirit of alpine
climbing or mountaineering adventure, and the promise of a creative film or television
talent. Awarded for the first time this year, the prize went to American Peter Brown for Stone
Dance. Set in Yosemite and featuring climbers John Bachar and the late John
Yablonski, Stone Dance is a probing and gritty film that provides a penetrating
looking into a climbing subculture.
The festival audience cast their ballots for Escape from Tibet as the winner
of the Peoples' Choice Award. Produced and directed by Nick Gray and
Yorkshire Television, the film follows a group of Tibetans trying to leave their life of
repression to attain a dream of religious freedom and the chance of seeing the Dalai Lama.
Special Jury awards were also given to L'uomo di legno and Les
quatres saisons du berger.
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