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The 21st 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
and Mountain Environment.
Topping the award list was Grand Prize winner The Tsaatan - The Reindeer Riders,
produced by the Paris, France-based production company, Boréales. Set in the outermost
limits of northern Mongolia, this film illustrates the life of Bat, the leader of the
nomadic Tsaatan people, and his mutually enriching relationship with the reindeer. The
Tsaatan's way of life reflects their reverence for the environment as Bat asserts that
"Nature agrees to give if man only takes what he needs." Reindeer Riders
also took the award for Best Film on Mountain Culture.
Best Film on Climbing went to South African film San Valentin. This is
the story of six South African friends who journeyed to Chile's northern Patagonia icecap
to climb the highest mountain in northern Patagonia - San Valentin. They travel by boat
for 900 km to the foot of the San Rafael Glacier, then spend another month on the icefield
to reach and climb the mountain of their dreams.
Italy's Snowboard took the award for Best Film on Mountain Sports.
Directed by Alessio Viola, Snowboard chronicles extreme snowboarding
first descents by Jerome Ruby and Andre-Pierre Rhem on the Mont Blanc massif.
Mountain Gorilla: A Shattered Kingdom was a double winner, taking Best
Film on Mountain Environment and People's Choice Award, voted for electronically for the
first time this year courtesy of Outside Online. In Zaire, one of the most spectacular and
politically unstable areas of Africa, thousands of refugees from Rwanda are moving higher
and higher into the mountains in search of wood for cooking and heat. This human tragedy
is creating a new kind of threat for the mountain gorillas living on the forested volcanic
slopes in the region.
A Special Jury award was also given to Canada's Legacy, directed and
produced by Peter McAllister. A poignant commentary on the political acts which have led
to the current logging practices in British Columbia's coastal temperate rain forests,
using images and rhetoric.
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