Tour Films

David Lama is best known as the young competition climber who conquered an 8b+ at the age of 12 and went on to become a junior world championship and twice winner of the European Youth Cup. But these days, Lama is focused on the toothy peaks in the world’s tallest mountain ranges. A New Perspective follows the soft-spoken climber and his partner, Peter Ortner, as they tackle these heights. After free climbing the Cerro Torre in Patagonia, the pair travels to Pakistan to attempt to free climb Eternal Flame, a pitch up the Nameless Tower in the lofty Karakorum Range.

Alison Gannett is a renowned professional skier who understands the connection between the environment and outdoor pursuits. Heading up three nonprofits, including Save Our Snow, she also runs a 75-acre farm in Paonia, Colorado, She is unnerved, however, because the land she nurtures is threatened by natural gas interests.

Tintype was one of the first “instant” forms of photography that allowed images to be developed quickly and inexpensively. The process was popular at fairs around the time of the Civil War, so it preceded the modern-day Instagram by over 150 years. Harry Taylor, who learned tintype as a way to keep his mind distracted during a family tragedy, says, “The perfection that you get with digital is so easy, you can’t help but take it for granted.” So he decided to go old school.

Badru Mugerwa is part of an international effort to monitor changes in vegetation and animal composition from climate change. His piece of the puzzle is in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda, where he sets dozens of camera traps designed to record the movements and habits of animals, which range from agile felines to stolid primates and from tiny deer to giant elephants. It’s a job that connects Mugerwa not only to Biwindi’s animals, and to local biodiversity concerns, but also to a global issue of the most profound significance — climate change.

When a crew of filmmakers and kayakers head to the Mexican jungle to hunt big waterfalls, they find a place of unrelenting rain, heinous insects, thick mud, scary viruses and utter perfection. Cascada, another gorgeous short film by Forge Motion Pictures, follows the crew as they explore a world beyond expectations, where biting flies, tangled vines and shoddy hotel rooms can’t detract from the unrivaled waterfalls and powerful rapids they discover.

Mountainfilm audiences have come to know the hyper-achieving Dr. Geoff Tabin, a world-class climber who has ascended the Seven Summits and who is best known for dramatically changing the rates of curable blindness in Nepal and Rwanda.

The parting shot of this short documentary makes the surprised viewer want to go back and watch from the beginning more carefully. The appealing Georgena Terry, who fabricates bicycles scientifically designed for a woman’s shape and size, proves that bikes, at the least, are personally liberating machines.

“Once upon a time, a genius of science, a chemist called Leo, stumbled on a substance, a curious gloopy mess, that molded into any shape the genius cared to test.” While his marvelous gloop seemed to have unlimited uses, it also had a darker side that no one could foresee.

What does it really take to combine passion for adventure and a responsibility to protect the environment? In this “MoveShake” film, a character-driven series, we meet Gregg Treinish, a National Geographic Adventurer who launched the nonprofit Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation (ASC) in 2011. Based on the idea that those who recreate in natural areas have a responsibility to protect them, ASC facilitates partnerships between adventure athletes and researchers.

Just a few years ago, Alex Honnold was just another girlfriendless climber living in his van and roaming the Yosemite Valley. But he began putting up routes with increasing audacity and remarkable composure and then pulled off a couple of insanely bold free solo feats on Moonlight Buttress and Half Dome, shocking the climbing world and drawing media attention and public intrigue in equal measure.

Aaron Huey is a photographer whose evocative and richly textured work has graced Mountainfilm’s gallery walls more than once. This short piece profiles his work at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, home to some 300 Lakota Sioux Indians. It’s a dark world of poverty and violence but one in which Aaron has allowed himself to be deeply drawn. Why? So that he can give voice to a people’s unspoken pain and suffering and the injustice that caused it and sustains it.

Tony Donoghue has brought the locavore philosophy to filmmaking. His earlier A Film from My Parish - 6 Farms (Mountainfilm 2009) and the new Irish Folk Furniture were created entirely within 2 miles of his home and feature subjects that appear, initially, to be of only limited interest. But something as simple as an old chest of drawers, when seen through Donoghue’s lens, becomes a living and breathing character, and Donoghue proves that a talented storyteller can charm us with any subject matter.

“From the youngest age, we are taught to believe that safety is our greatest need. We created Icarus and his dream of flight, and then we walled ourselves in with cubicles tight.” So begins the poem in Joy of Air, which demonstrates that safety does not necessarily mean “no fun.”

It’s odd to consider that the one person who has exhaustively tracked, detailed and archived Himalayan expeditions of the past half century is someone who has never climbed a mountain herself. Elizabeth Hawley has interviewed thousands of expedition leaders and is a force of nature every bit as impressive and indefatigable as any alpinist, but she has never been interested in joining them on any of the routes that she’s come to know intimately in her mind’s eye. This portrait of Miss Hawley reflects the character it chronicles by being direct, sharp and not without a sense of humor.

Did these men and women travel here, to the windswept and starkly beautiful grasslands of Spioenkop, South Africa, to fight on historic battlegrounds, or did they come for celebration? Both, it would seem. Inspired by T.S. Eliot’s “Little Gidding,” this short film tells the story of the 2012 Single Speed World Championships, the first held in Africa. With dreamlike shots and oblique narration, it follows mountain bikers as they fight, struggle and rediscover their love for the bike. As the film puts it, “Dust in the air suspended. The beauty vanquished. They paw the ground.

Last winter, if you had happened upon a particular isolated and frigid beach north of the Arctic Circle in Norway, you might have been surprised to find two young men, two surfboards and a pile of garbage. Inge Wegge (age 25) and Jørn Ranum (age 22) spent nine months of the year — of which all could arguably be considered winter in the frozen north — testing a hypothesis that they could live happily, and even comfortably, off the waste of others.

A snowboarder shreds a sick line in this sweet stop-motion animation film.

“Science is important,” says Bruce Means, whose investigative work into a species of tiny toads in remotest Guyana, South America, is featured in this engaging short. Science is also, by the look of it, exotic, exciting and not without a hint of danger. His work is about understanding biodiversity in order to help conserve it and to do so, he has to reach the toad’s habitat. In his second foray to the ancient and lost world of the Tepuis, he is joined by National Geographic photographer Joe Riis and professional climber Mark Synnott.

Jason Houston and Hal Clifford have delivered short gems of films to Mountainfilm for the past several years — vignettes that offer slice-of-life glimpses into unusual characters. This year, the character is not so unusual: She is a quite normal, if beguiling, little girl.

We hold ordinary heroes in the highest regard at Mountainfilm, so E.J. Scott should feel at home in Telluride as he fits the description perfectly. Suffering from a degenerative, genetic disease of the retina called choroideremia, Scott is slowly losing his vision. His response is to commit enormous amounts of time, money and, most likely, knee cartilage to raise funds and awareness for a cure by running a dozen marathons in a dozen states in 2012.

“Can we endure the things we do or not?” asks Wichan Chaona, a  poor trash picker who lives in Thailand. Reminiscent of Lucy Walker’s Waste Land (Mountainfilm 2010), this short film looks at the life of someone who has to work hard in tough conditions and still retains his dignity. Scavenger is a wonderfully spare film, telling the story of this simple and content man in a handsome, straightforward way.

Shocking behind-the-scenes footage reveals the secrets of how to make your quaint, little mountain cabin look "wintery."

How has John Kitchin found a way to connect physically to the center of the world and spiritually to the divine? By rollerblading. Sounds crazy, but before you write Kitchin off as certifiable, you should consider that his actual certifications are in neurology and psychiatry. If you’re someone who questions the sanity of daily life on the success treadmill, this film may push you to do what you want — and reap the rich psychic rewards that come with rolling through life.

Prepare for a mix of goose bumps and nausea as finely calculated risk meets pure insanity. Split of a Second gets inside the thoughts and motives of wingsuit world champion Espen Fadnes.

On April 6, 2011, Roger Strong was skinning to one of his favorite backcountry runs on Washington’s Snoqualmie Pass with some friends when he triggered a violent avalanche. The slide tore through the couloir, leaving Strong and the other skiers badly injured. A year to the day after the tragedy, Strong — who spent three months in a wheelchair recovering — returns to ski the Slot Couloir and contemplate the fine balance between risk and passion. The film follows him as he reflects on his family, his love of the mountains and what he can learn from his mistakes.

Andreas Fransson is an extreme skier who has garnered attention for dicey first ascents in a half-dozen countries and a horrific accident that nearly killed him. On the outside, he’s an amazing skier who isn’t afraid to confront massive danger, and a deeper look reveals an inward-gazing individual whose musings about life on the edge are thoughtful and eloquent. “Could you get the thrill of your life and feel truly alive if you knew they were perfectly safe?” he asks. “Would your consciousness be completely in the moment if you didn’t know this was serious business?

After four nights and five days, Craig DeMartino, Jarem Frye and Pete Davis scrambled to the top of the 1,800-foot Zodiac Wall on Yosemite’s El Capitan on June 9, 2012. It’s a route that’s been climbed countless times, but not like this: the first all-disabled ascent. DeMartino (who lost a leg in a climbing accident), Frye (who lost a leg to bone cancer) and Davis (who was born without an arm) didn’t accomplish the feat to raise awareness or champion their cause. They did it because they are climbers first and disabled second.

Impeccable rock, one-of-a kind setting, good and trusted friends: the stuff of climbers’ dreams. Real life is rarely so straightforward, though, and this story of a climbing trip in Kyrgyzstan is haunted by the specter of an earlier one that had frightening and dire results. In 2000, John Dickey went on an expedition to Kyrgyzstan and was kidnapped by violent militants who held him and his partners at gunpoint for six days. They made a harrowing escape, but Dickey is still troubled by the memories of what they had to do to save their own lives.

A New York City iron worker named Timmy Brennan found escape by surfing in the waves of Breezy Point. Then, Superstorm Sandy hit, destroying everything he had, including his cherished surfboard.

Bianca Giaever asked a 6 year old what her movie should be about, and this is what he told her.

Archery is in the Mongol blood. After all, Genghis Khan conquered half the world with it.

A lion’s roar is supposed to be deep and loud, but Bapoto, the smallest cub in his pride, is worried about the sound of his roar. The lovely animated short The Squeakiest Roar shows us that being different can be beautiful.

Following his elegiac look at the plight of the Colorado River in Chasing Water (Mountainfilm 2011), filmmaker, photographer and adventurer Peter McBride turns his talents to an analogous story about the vast watershed beneath Mt. Kenya and the challenges it faces. Beautifully shot and thoughtfully written, this film paints a human portrait of climate change and frames it in forces far greater than human.

A passion for surfing, shaping and creating something new out of something old permeates the short documentary Upcycling, which was discovered by Mountainfilm in Brazil during a São Paulo tour show. The film examines the world of a craftsman who takes used longboards and reshapes them into new ones, a process that requires many hands. This story not only captures the beauty of bringing new life to a reclaimed object, it also demonstrates the power that comes with doing something you love.

In the plant kingdom, carnivorous organisms hold a certain allure. Despite their viciousness, they are beautiful, complex creations that have inspired in some people an interest that verges on obsession. Well-Fed takes a look inside the unusual world of carnivorous plants and its devoted collectors — from a man in California who houses one of the largest collections in the world to a young man who was forced to construct a greenhouse when he started with one plant and quickly amassed more than 200.

This film features bloody knuckles, all-out grunt sessions and willful participation in pain. Welcome to the world of off-width crack climbing, a sub-genre that attracts a rare breed willing to jam elbows, knees, torsos — whatever it takes, really — into large cracks for climbing ascents. It’s painful, tough and occasionally downright awful. But two British climbers, Pete Whittaker and Tom Randall, love it.

The wolves featured in this short live in a shelter and have never known life in the wild. But you would never know that by looking into their eyes or listening to their howls, which express a connection to a deep, abiding and mysterious place that has no link with captivity.