Photo: Dave Garrow, Mt. Logan © Cory Richards

The 2009 Banff Mountain Film and Book Festivals are not to be missed!

Visit our website for a detailed list of events.

Join us for the opening weekend of the festivals on October 31 and November 1. Fill your weekend with feature-length films from around the world and the Mountain Art and Craft Sale. Get your Christmas shopping done early this year – artwork, pottery, weavings, handbags, and more!

Mark your calendars for Tuesday, November 3 and Wednesday, November 4 for Radical Reels and The Snow Show…As us about the NEW Epic Sampler Ticket package for these two great events.

Take 2 days off work! Join us on Thursday, November 5 and Friday, November 6 and immerse yourself in the world’s best mountain and adventure travel stories. Join us for literary lunches with Steve House, author and one of the world’s best high-altitude climbers  and Royal Robbins – climber, entrepreneur, and author. Guest speakers include the King of sport climbing, Chris Sharma, Conservationist Mike Fay, National Geographic Photographer Steve Winter, and more!

On Friday evening, November 6, choose from two evening programs featuring guest speakers: Swiss alpinist Ueli Steck OR accomplished BASE jumper and extreme Skier Karina Hollekim. Both speakers will be followed by films entered into the competition. On Saturday evening, November 7, Dean Karnazes, known as the Ultramarathon Man, joins us on stage. Of course, your days will be occupied with the Daytime Film Screenings.  Purchase a full day ticket for just $45…and this gives you open access to see all films screened in a particular theatre during the day.

Consider purchasing the Cascade Book Festival Pack, the Rundle Film Weekend Pack, or one of our other ticket packages if you’re planning on attending multiple events!

Contact The Banff Centre Box Office at 1.403.762.6301 or visit our website for more information on tickets, packages, and events.

We look forward to seeing you soon!

When this year’s Banff Mountain Photography Competition winners were just about to be announced and festivals coordinator for Mountain Culture & Environment, Christine Thél, was busy sending out congratulations to the seven award winners (from four different countries) and nine photographers (from five different countries) who received special mentions. But that’s easy work compared to the avalanche of images received that had to be uploaded to The Banff Centre’s  FTP site, saved to an external hard drive, entered into a database, and then finally perused by a select jury.

Christine has been working with the Banff Mountain Photography Competition for the past four years and 2009 marked a special development for the program. Previously, photographers have submitted hard copies of images for the jury, but in the past several years Christine noticed a decline in entries and concluded “we needed to go digital”.

Was she ever right! In 2009, the number of images doubled from the previous year to over 4,200, with more than 600 photographers competing from 41 countries. Of the total submissions, 95 per cent were submitted digitally. With assistance from The Centre’s Information Technology Department,  Christine set up a special page on The Banff Centre’s FTP site to receive the images and she then downloaded them to an external hard drive for viewing later with the jury.

Not only is the online system more effective in generating and storing more image submissions, Christine also believes the images were of better quality. “Several of the semi-professional and professional artists that hadn’t submitted recently returned to us because of the digital uploading system,” says Christine. And as if that’s not enough, there’s an important “green” component to the whole competition now. There was less waste because very few images had to be printed and we reduced emissions since no postage or return postage of the entries was needed.

This year’s jury consisted of three Canadian members, Alec Pytlowany and Andrew Querner (both photographers and past award winners), and Kristy Davison, the photo editor for Highline Magazine. The jury selected Nathalie Daoust’s artistic and ephemeral image of a young woman in a misty mountain landscape as the grand prize winner; a bit of a departure from the traditional mountain sports or landscape image that we’ve seen in the past. But festivals director Shannon O’Donoghue is happy with their selection as it aligns perfectly with the inspiring creativity mandate of The Banff Centre.

All the winning images are now displayed online and will be in the Sally Borden Building by late October. The images will be featured as part of the Film Festival intermission video, and will also travel to various locations throughout Canada and the United States to be enjoyed by those who aren’t able to make it to Banff.

Credit: The winning photo for the 2009 Banff Mountain Photography Competition. A stunning image by photographer Nathalie Daoust.

Majka Burhardt
Photo Credit: Gabe Rogel

Climbing is what sparked Majka Burhardt’s interest in Ethiopia but it’s the coffee that’s bringing her back.

A writer, climber, and guide, Burhardt first travelled to Ethiopia to research the country’s coffee industry, where she discovered instead a climber’s paradise. This mission resulted in her first book, Vertical Ethiopia: Climbing Toward Possibility in the Horn of Africa which was entered into the Banff Mountain Book Festival competition – and subsequently led to her coming to Banff as a guest speaker for the 2008 Banff Mountain Book Festival.  She also participated in the 2008 Banff Mountain Writing Program, held during the festival.

Burhardt’s non-fiction writing combines her background in anthropology with her passion for adventure – she’s been published in Patagonia, Women’s Adventure, The Explorers’s Journal, and Climbing magazines. A certified climbing guide since 1998, Burhardt was the fourth woman in the United States to become certified by the American Mountain Guides Association.  She now specializes in guiding multi-pitch rock climbing and technical ice climbing, and has guided expeditions in Ecuador, Bolivia, Mexico, Nepal, and Alaska.

Prior to entering her book and speaking at the festival, Burhardt was not familiar with the Banff Mountain Grant program. Festivals Director, Shannon O’Donoghue mentioned the grants program, which prompted her to apply. Burhardt’s grant-winning project, entitled The Damara Sequence, will create a film and a series of articles about Namibia’s Himba tribe and the mountainous landscape they inhabit in the Damaraland region, as explored by climbers and anthropologists.

“I like to say that climbers, at their essence, like to get dirty. They get close. They connect with the land and commit to landscape in a way that is understood by people who have to do the same to create a life,” says Burhardt, of her upcoming climbing trip to Africa. “Namibia is one of the only countries in the world to have conservation mandated as part of its constitution. It also has some of the best roads in Africa, one of its most stable governments, and a geographic pre-disposition to granite. Add in the Himba-seen as the last great southern African Pastoral tribe, and you have The Damara Sequence.”

Burhardt will be departing on May 1, 2009 for the five-week expedition. About her trip, she says, “the photographer Gabe Rogel, and videographer Chris Alstrin (who happens to be a 2006 Banff Mountain Grant winner and past film festival entrant) are ecstatic about the recent heavy rains which will allow them to film some of the greenest terrain the desert country has had in over fifty years.”

Leveraging grant dollars with other sources of funding is often how recipients are able to be involved with larger projects.  “The Banff grant was the first funding support we received for our project and thus it signaled, to us, a commitment and interest from the industry, and to other potential funding groups it provided the gateway to support”, says Burhardt.” I was able to use the commitment from Banff as reason to fully pursue this project.” Other sources of funding for The Damara Sequence project include a Polartec Challenge Grant, as well as in-kind support from Patagonia, Osprey, Outdoor Research, Clif Bar, Scarpa, and Petzl.

Burhardt is not sure if The Damara Sequence will be ready in time to enter the film into the 2009 Banff Mountain Film Festival, but audiences should definitely be looking out for it in 2010.

And what’s next for Burhardt? Along with the film, she is simultaneously working on her next book Coffee: Authentic Ethiopia, a visual and narrative tale of opportunity, resources, education, and  heritage. “For me, it brings my experience in Ethiopia full circle as the first time I went to Ethiopia it was to search for a rare coffee bean-that time I ended up climbing, this time, I’m focusing on the coffee.”

For up-to-date information on Majka Burhardt’s trip to Namibia, visit her blog site:

http://www.majkaburhardt.com/liminal-line-blog/

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