Our Festival Guests

Thom Beers is one of the most successful independent producers of television in this country. His production company, Original Productions, produces nearly 20 hours of television a week for such outlets as the History Channel, Discovery Channel and A&E. Beers’s programs often have a similar theme, focusing on the working man (and woman) with hit shows, such as Ice Road Truckers, Deadliest Catch and Coal. Beers was once on the Board of Directors of Mountainfilm.

Phil Borges is a photographer who has created memorable portraits of indigenous cultures around the world, but he’s had a particularly close and long-standing relationship with the country of Tibet. His work “Tibetan Portrait: the Power of Compassion” was notable for its incisive photographs that were largely black and white with a hint of skin tone. His latest book is called Tibet: Culture on the Edge, and while it reflects his clear and abiding love of the country and its people, it also demonstrates Borges’s viewpoints on the future of Tibet. Several photos in the book stand out, including a stunning shot of a monk walking alone along a mountain trail through countless ribbons of prayer flags (used for the 2012 Mountainfilm poster). One heartbreaking photograph is of a village that the Chinese have built for nomads where the homes look like barracks — all identical and side by side by side — showing how their free-range lifestyle is, as the book title says, “on the edge.”

Ken Burns has built a singular career as a documentarian in this country with his epic, historical films about crucial periods in American history. His breakthrough subject was The Civil War, a series that garnered multiple awards and an enormous viewership and led to many other projects on America, such as radio, baseball, Mark Twain, Frank Lloyd Wright, jazz and World War II, the national parks and the dust bowl. Using his trademark technique of historical accounts, period photos and intensive research, Burns has made a film that not only speaks to this (literally) dark time in American history but is also a cautionary tale for our times.

Alex Chadwick is a radio reporter who worked for NPR for decades. He is best known at Mountainfilm for his film series Interviews Fifty Cents, which pair Chadwick with a guest who sits for an interview at a folding card table. At the end of the conversation, Chadwick reaches into a cigar box and pulls out two quarters, which he gives to the guest. Chadwick recently did a piece on environmental activist Tim DeChristopher.

Paul Ehrlich has been a pioneer in alerting the public to the problems of overpopulation, and in raising issues of population, resources and the environment as matters of public policy. He was perhaps the first person to broach the topic in a broad context with his book The Population Bomb in 1968. His book — cowritten with wife Anne — has had a profound and lasting impact on the discourse on population growth. In his current work at the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford, Ehrlich, an entomologist, studies dynamics and genetics of butterflies. Another special interest of Ehrlich’s is cultural evolution, especially with respect to environmental ethics, and he is deeply involved in the Millennium Assessment of Human Behavior (MAHB).

Dave Foreman is a leading environmentalist who founded the group Earth First!. Inspired by Edward Abbey, who he says was “a visionary, the greatest inspiration my generation of conservation activists in the West ever had,” Foreman has started the Rewilding Institute, which is dedicated to “the development and promotion of ideas and strategies to advance continental-scale conservation in North America and to combat the extinction crisis.” His recent book, Manswarm and the Killing of Wildlife, is about population issues and how population affects the extinction of species.

Steve House is considered to be one of the world’s leading high-altitude mountaineers with a focus on going for the summit with a fast and light alpine style. While he has received a lot of attention for his ascents of K7 and Nanga Parbat, he’s also worked hard to create new routes in Alaska, Canada and Europe.  House  is also an author, having written the well-reviewed book, Beyond the Mountains about his approach and attitude at altitude. He lives in Ridgeway, Colorado.

Bernadette McDonald had a nearly 20-year career as the head of the Banff Mountain Festivals before turning to writing full time in 2006. Her books have received top accolades, including being shortlisted for Boardman-Tasker Prize (Brotherhood of the Rope), receiving the ITAS prize for mountain literature and receiving the Kekoo Naoroji Award for mountain literature (both Brotherhood and her biography of Tomaz Humar). Other awards include the King Albert award from Switzerland, the Summit of Excellence Award, the Alberta Order of Excellence and being named an honorary member of the Himalaya Club of India. McDonald's newest book Freedom Climbers (Rocky Mountain Books, 2011) documents the history of a group of extraordinary Polish adventurers who emerged from under the blanket of oppression following the Second World War to become the worlds’ leading Himalayan climbers.

Raised in Colorado, Naylor has been involved in many field-level research projects around the world and has published widely on issues related to intensive crop production, aquaculture, biofuels and climate change.

Joe Riis is a wildlife biologist, iLCP photographer and National Geographic photographer and grantee, specializing in wildlife stories, human interest and the environment. He lives in South Dakota.

Raised in Santa Cruz, California, Chris Sharma has been a professional climber for nearly half of his life, even though he didn’t start climbing until he was 12. He started at a climbing gym, won the Bouldering Nationals at 14, then, a year later, climbed the highest rated route in America (5.14c). Since then, his career has taken him around  the world, where he has sent one impossible route after another, including an unforgettable arch in Majorca, which is the subject of the award-winning film, King Lines.

Sandra Steingraber is an ecologist, an author and, now, an activist. She writes a regular column for Orion magazine and has written several books, including her latest Raising Elijah which is about how to make sure one’s children navigate a world that is fraught with environmental dangers. She knows about this firsthand from another book she wrote, Living Downstream, which is about her own battle with cancer that was caused by toxins. (The book is also a documentary by the same name). Steingraber has also become a leading voice in the nation-wide battle about natural gas and fracking.