Banff returns, ready to inspire
Queenstown Memorial Centre will host the Banff Centre Mountain Film Festival next week. The programme features a selection of the most inspiring action, environmental, and adventure films from the original festival, which is held in Banff, Canada, each year.
Around 360 films are entered into the annual festival, which was launched in 1976 as The Banff Festival of Mountain Films by The Banff Centre. Since its humble beginnings it has grown into the largest and most prestigious mountain film festivals in the world. The annual world tour kicks off each year after the completion of the festival held in Autumn in Banff – this year they’ll be stopping at 550 locations across 45 countries.
Jackson Griffith looks after events and communications for the New Zealand Alpine Club, which run the event each year as a fundraiser. Tahuna hosts one of the biggest events on the tour and “is such a big hub for mountain sports, I can imagine the audience down in Queenstown are very much finely tuned into mountain sports in general,” says Jackson.
This year’s films will feature skiing, snowboarding, biking, running, slacklining, and just about any adventure sport you can think of. You’ll also see some common themes running through the films including a strong focus on environmental issues. Each year, the Banff Centre will offer up a selection of their best films out of the 360 submissions to each of the countries that are part of the tour. The Alpine Club also assist in choosing films that will be suited to Kiwi viewers.
“We’ll give our view on what we think best suits the New Zealand audience – what may work on the East Coast of the US might not work so well down here. We have about 30 screenings across New Zealand in 14 towns and cities, so it’s quite a big programme. We’ll, quite appropriately, start in Queenstown on the 3rd of May and then finish up in Auckland on the 29th of June. It will be a nice road trip across the country, visiting the main places. We have top selections from the Banff library of films – they select the best films each year to go on tour. In Queenstown we’re going to have 14 films to show, so there’ll be seven shown each night.”
Each year, the film festival is one of the biggest fundraisers for New Zealand’s Alpine Club. The club encourage mountaineering, rock climbing and allied activities while also have a strong focus on the conservation of the mountain regions. Money from ticket sales each year go back into development projects for the mountain community.
“A great example of that is that we recently relaunched the Aspiring Hut, just near Wanaka, which was a huge redevelopment of that big landmark. Some of the proceeds from last year’s festival went into funding the redevelopment. It’s got a nice theme – some countries, I think, will run their Banff World Tour slightly differently, but for us it’s a non-profit venture where we can channel the money back into mountain development projects.”
The Banff Centre Mountain Film Festival will take place at Queenstown Memorial Centre on Wednesday the 3rd and Thursday the 4th of May. You can check out the programme for each night, view trailers for each movie and get tickets at banff.nz
