Banff film festival hits the road with Radical Reels

Held annually each fall from the end of October into early November, the Banff Mountain Film Festival has included the Radical Reels night, which is a special screening of the wildest high-adrenaline films entered in the Banff Mountain Film Festival. So many action films were being submitted to the film festival that they could not fit into the regular screenings, resulting in the creation of the hugely successful Radical Reels evening presentation.

But you don’t have to journey to Banff each fall to see these films.

Since 2004, the Radical Reels Tour has also been out on the road. The established Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour has been thrilling audiences since 1981. Most World Tour screenings include a range of different themes (adventure sports, environment, mountain culture, heritage, etc.) and styles (action-filled shorts; longer, more comprehensive films; amateur and professional productions; etc.).

The Radical Reels Tour presentations incorporate all these elements, but the focus is on dynamic, high-adrenaline films featuring sports such as skiing, climbing, kayaking, BASE jumping, snowboarding and mountain biking. These activities continue to be included on the World Tour, but Radical Reels Tour is for audiences who prefer all action films.

Proceeds will go toward the Outdoor Program international trip to Jamaica, where students and faculty will make a documentary about sustainable adventure travel and teaching orphan children how to photograph their lives.

For a trailer, see mesastate.edu/sl/op.

About the films

The Radical Reels Tour delivers a selection of high energy action films from around the world. Aimed to thrill audiences wanting to go faster, steeper, higher and deeper, Radical Reels is now in its fifth year on the road.

For 2008, Radical Reels will once again screen the best in dynamic action sports filmmaking.

The challenge: film and edit a five-minute film by following five athletes performing their outdoor sports during five days. Action, humor, lifestyle — the script is totally free. In “Ephemere,” the athletes encounter a mysterious woman who can control time.

“Light in Liquid” features expeditions and adventures on rivers and creeks in Colorado, Idaho and Mexico. This kayak collage pushes the creative edge in the whitewater film genre and focuses on the process of travel, the paddlers themselves and the world around us just as much as it does on running waterfalls and creeks.

“Lost and Found” is the story of the extraordinary season of 2007 as seen through the eyes of world-class skiers and snowboarders. Shot entirely on 16mm and high-definition, it is a testament to the terrain and conditions that only exist in the western hemisphere. The winter of 2007 was feast or famine; “Lost and Found” documents the feast.

“Rock Wings” features Soul Flyers Loïc Jean-Albert, Julian Boulle and Ueli Gegenschatz on the Eiger and the Jungfrau in Switzerland, as they perform the closest ever flight to the ground in formation.

“The Cut” is an international collection of the most progressive and creative mountain-bike freeriders and downhill racers in the world. Ride shotgun in “Sevenvision” with the boys and follow their inaugural season as they jet-set the globe, all for the sake of having fun on their bikes.

In “Trial & Air,” obtaining aerial ski footage was a dangerous one: tandem paraglide over skiers as they drop into gnarly lines and exposed couloirs in the Jackson Hole backcountry. The result is environmentally friendly aerial footage, at an affordable price. And the big daddy of them all: Matt Combs’s soon-to-be world-famous shot of a 300-foot ski-BASE jump high in the Tetons.

“Yamabushi” follows Will Gadd and his climbing partner as they put up a new route on “the Yam,” as the massive rock wall in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains is affectionately called. In Gadd’s words, it is a “sporty sport route:” eight pitches following the big roofs and vastly overhanging sections of the wall that have not been climbed before. For more information, please see http://www.banff centre.ca/ mountainculture /radicalreels/.