Mountain air, minus the altitude sickness

Rock climbing, river kayaking, high-altitude paragliding and speed flying. Those are just a few of the mountain sports featured at the Banff Mountain Film Festival. This week the festival brings its world tour to Portland.

REI stores in the Portland metro area are sponsoring the festival locally, as part of a fundraising effort to support Adventures Without Limits, a nonprofit organization that provides outdoor experiences for people of all ages and abilities. Proceeds from the screenings will go to Adventures Without Limits and will allow it to continue to lead outdoor trips for all people, including those with disabilities.

Banff Mountain Film Festival features over 25 films from around the world with one similar thread tying them together: mountains. Mountain culture, mountain sports, mountain lovers—anything involving a fair amount of altitude and ice fits the bill.

Most of the films are naturally focused on the great outdoors. There are plenty of scenes to make a viewer’s stomach jump into their throat. Expect everything from snowboarders who free-ride narrow strips of snow between exposed rocks to world-champion unicyclists displaying their off-road unicycling skills.

It’s easy to assume that the festival will be packed with action shots of wild people taking wild chances at some dangerous mountain sports, but this festival isn’t just for the gnarled outdoorsy types. The “extreme” component is left at the door and a more holistic approach to respecting mountains—and nature in general—is apparent.

The grand prize-winning film this year is Finding Farley, an hour-long documentary about a Canadian family of three that decides to trace environmentalist Farley Mowat’s footsteps. Paddling, sailing and trekking across Canada, this husband and wife and their two year-old son follow the 5,000 kilometers of land that Mowat’s literature covered. Their documented quest won the film not only a grand prize, but also the People’s Choice Award at the festival.

Other films in the festival have nothing to do with mountain sports and instead focus on various mountain cultures, like those found in Tibet and Mongolia. Such cultures often find difficulty remaining intact, and the films are a testament to their strength. A number of films about Japanese culture regarding snow and mountains also made it into the festival.

Nevertheless, there is certainly a lot of rock climbing and skiing to be seen at the screenings, as they are popular themes.

The Banff Mountain Film Festival began in Banff, British Columbia, and started to reach out to other communities in 1986. Since then, the festival has spread to cities all over North America and the rest of the world, making its mountain films more accessible to the public through a community-based outreach program.

REI will select films from the festival to screen this week. While the first screening—tonight in Portland—sold out almost immediately, there are still tickets available for screenings on Wednesday and Thursday.