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May 25, 1996 - Bruce Herrod, a South African mountaineer reached the summit of Everest at 5 p.m. On the radio, we urge him to come down as soon as possible because the descent is dangerous in the middle of the night. A few hours later, no news from him. From this South African expedition which turned into a fiasco and another expedition carried out in parallel, the testimonies of the members of these expeditions show to what extent the thirst for climbing to the top of certain mountaineers, combined with the lack of oxygen , can alter the lucidity of climbers to the point of changing their relationship to death and thus lead them to neglect other expedition members in order to ensure their victory or save their own life.
Solving for Z explores IFMGA guide and father Zahan Billimoria’s relationship to the intoxicating highs and crushing blows of a life in the high-consequence environment of big mountain skiing.
Yosemite National Park, in California, is one of the most fascinating in the United States. In the eastern part of the park, isolated granite peaks rise 3,900 meters above the valley floor: El Capitan, Half Dome, and Sentinel. El Capitan is the largest unbroken mass of granite in the world and a legendary site for mountaineering and free climbing. Every year, the world's best climbers challenge its impressive face. The film, enhanced with interviews and spectacular footage, follows the preparations for and ascent of El Capitan by a group of elite climbers: Scott Burk, Leo Houlding, Jim Bridwell, Jean-Marc Troussier, and Valerio Fulco, with whom humor is one of the essential ingredients of this adventure.
Director Damien Roz was twelve years old when he attended a conference by mountaineer Jean-Marie Choffat who told of his passion for the mountains and his fight against cancer. Shocked, the young boy said to himself that one day he would tell the story of this extraordinary man. 29 years ago Jean-Marie Choffat, a seasoned mountaineer, suffered from liver cancer. It was then announced to his parents that he only had a few months left to live. But Jean-Marie, who had just had a son, promised himself that he would see his son grow up until he was at least 20… His son Marcelin is almost thirty today and Jean Marie is still there. Jean-Marie lived through the golden age of mountaineering with some 1,200 ascents around the world and many firsts... If he remembers an ascent of the north face of the Grandes Jorasses between two chemotherapy sessions, he evokes his strong friendships with Yannick Seigneur, René Desmaison or Gaston Rébuffat...
Full throttle climbing in Switzerland. Autoroute captures the full-throttle climbing odyssey of Americans Dave Graham, Luke Parady and Joe Kinder as they test themselves on the most difficult boulders and cliffs in Switzerland and France. Witness Graham makes the second ascent of Passion (14d), third ascent of Speed (14d), first ascent of La Foon (14d), and the first ascent of Bah Bah Black Sheep (14c/d). Additionally, autoroute profiles Swiss native Stephan Siegrist, climbing his amazing 26 pitch sport route, La Vida el Silbar on the Eiger's 6,000' North Face; Alex Huber on his unrepeated creation Black Power in Austria; and Lisa Rands sending in Tralenta, France.
The true story of Joe Simpson and Simon Yates' disastrous and nearly-fatal mountain climb of 6,344m Siula Grande in the Cordillera Huayhuash in the Peruvian Andes in 1985.
King Lines follows Chris Sharma on his search for the planet's greatest climbs. From South American fantasy boulders to the sweeping limestone walls of Europe, Sharma finds and climbs the hardest, most spectacular routes. Off the coast of Mallorca he discovers his most outrageous project yet, a 70 foot arch rising from the Mediterranean Sea...
The French High Mountain Military Group (G.M.H.M.) expedition to Everest in 1981, led by General Pierre Astorg, took place on the north face of the mountain. Fifteen military climbers participated in this expedition, which lasted approximately ninety days. Their goal was to reach the summit by following a siege approach, but despite their efforts, the expedition failed to reach the summit. The French military, engaged since the beginning of March on the north face of Everest (8,848 meters), gave up less than 300 meters from the summit. The climbers, Jean-Claude Mosca, Hervé Sachetat, and Hubert Giot, gave up on setting up Camp 7, the last planned intermediate camp, at 8,600 meters. Poor weather conditions and the physical condition of the expedition members were the reasons for the failure of this meticulously prepared expedition...
The first all women climbing film. Lynn Hill and Beth Bennet make the first female free ascent of the Naked Edge, Eldorado Canyon, Colorado. A film by Robert Carmichael and Greg Lowe produced by Sports Imagery
This film, three years in the making, The remote forests of Kalkalpen National Park in Austria, the largest area of wilderness in the European Alps, have been left untouched by humans for nearly a quarter of a century in order to return to their natural, primeval state. The landscape regenerates itself in dramatic cycles of growth and decay, and this bold hands-off method of conservation yields salient results: the lynx, absent from the area for 115 years, has returned.
In 1983, the French Mountain Federation (FFM) organized a landmark climbing gathering in Saussois and the Verdon, bringing together generations of the greatest climbers of the time, including Patrick Edlinger, Jean-Claude Droyer, Jerry Moffatt, Jean-Claude Droyer, Robert Paragot, Lucien Bérardini, Ron Fawcett, Jean-Pierre Bouvier, and other major figures. This event symbolized the emergence of modern sport climbing as a practice in its own right in France, with the liberation of legendary routes and the rise of freestyle climbing, notably under the leadership of Droyer and Edlinger. This gathering was a key moment in the dissemination of the freestyle ethic and the evolution of grading, while Saussois and the Verdon were at the forefront of high difficulty in the world.
At the Limit is a documentary about extreme climbing. In this sports documentary, Pepe Danquart shows brothers Thomas and Alexander Huber climbing in Patagonia and on the granite rock "El Capitan" in Yosemite Valley (USA). A key part of the film is their attempt at a speed ascent of the 1,000-meter-high route "The Nose," in which the two athletes aim to break the then speed record of 2:48:30 hours, set by Hans Florine and Yuji Hirayama in September 2002.
BRAVE NEW WILD is an offbeat chronicle of America’s Golden Age of rock climbing before and after the controversial ascent of the Dawn Wall in 1970. Some forty years later, Oakley Anderson-Moore, the daughter of a pioneering climber, stumbles upon her father's old hi8 tapes, and sets out to answer the question: why climb when there's nothing to gain -- and everything to lose? Wry humor and an eclectic original soundtrack punctuate the delinquent antics of the Vulgarians in the ‘Gunks, the larger-than-life rivalry of Yosemite’s rock gods, and the fruit tramping, freight train hopping hobodom of her dad’s climbing life. This film is quintessential viewing for those who long for adventure.
A team of 12 men, 5 sailors, a doctor, a writer, a film crew, and 3 mountaineers, Jean-Marc Boivin, Thierry Leroy, and Dominique Marchal, set off by sailboat from Mar del Plata in Argentina to reach Riso Patron in Chile, via the Strait of Magellan, the Patagonian Channels, and Falcon Fjord. Their goal is to climb Riso Patron and then make the first crossing of the Campo de Hielo Sur glacier, or Hielo Continental Patagónico, to meet up with the sailors in Puerto Williams on Navarino Island in Chile, a village at the end of the world. After three attempts and an accident for Leroy, who was repatriated, they gave up, crossed the glacier and rejoined the boat, to set off for Cape Horn to climb the South face, knowing that the weather was good one day a month... On January 20, 1983, Jean-Marc Boivin and Dominique Marchal succeeded in making the first ascent of the South face of Cape Horn.
An ex-military recluse, living in the mountains of France to escape a traumatic past, is hunted down by those whose lives he has destroyed.
In the Bernese Alps, the Agassizhorn peak memorialises Louis Agassiz – a controversial 19th-century scientist, who not only named the mountain after himself, but who claimed he had discovered the Ice Age and went on to become one of the century's most virulent, most influential racists.
The documentary chronicles the journey and climbs of a group of young French people on the cliffs rising above Wadi Rum, in the desert south of Jordan, guided by two very athletic local Bedouins. The climbers set out to discover new, isolated places, fueled by a spirit of adventure. These places were little known, at least as climbing areas in 1988.
This documentary follows the feats of high-altitude climber Jerzy Kukuczka and his ascent to higher heights before his death in 1989.
Follow Alex Honnold as he attempts to become the first person to ever free solo climb Yosemite's 3,000 foot high El Capitan wall. With no ropes or safety gear, this would arguably be the greatest feat in rock climbing history.
The definitive film on the climb that captured headlines and ignited imaginations worldwide. Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson ascend the hardest big wall of all time: a 19 day ascent of The Dawn Wall, on the 3,000 foot vertical face of El Capitan, in Yosemite National Park. The film travels deeper than the climb, digging into the history of the climbers and painting an intimate portrait of Caldwell's harrowing life experiences that culminated in a single-minded drive to complete this impossible climb. The Dawn Wall is a heart-warming and inspiring movie that celebrates perseverance, camaraderie, and the universal spirit of dreaming big, and never giving up.
Marc-André Leclerc, an exceptional climber, has made solo his religion and ice his homeland. When filmmaker Peter Mortimer begins his film, he places his camera at the base of a British Columbia cliff and waits patiently for the star climber to come down to answer his questions. Marc André, a little uncomfortable, prefers to return to the depths of the forest where he lives in a tent with his girlfriend Brette Harrington. In the heart of winter, Peter films vertiginous solos on fragile ice. He tries to make appointments with the climber who is never there and does not seem really concerned by this camera pointed at him "For me, it would not be a solo if there was someone else" . Marc-André is thus, the "pure light" of the mountaineers of his time, which marvel Barry Blanchard, Alex Honnold or Reinhold Messner, interviewed in the film. An event film for an extraordinary character.
In the shady campgrounds of Yosemite valley, climbers carved out a counterculture lifestyle of dumpster-diving and wild parties that clashed with the conservative values of the National Park Service. And up on the walls, generation after generation has pushed the limits of climbing, vying amongst each other for supremacy on Yosemite's cliffs. "Valley Uprising" is the riveting, unforgettable tale of this bold rock climbing tradition in Yosemite National Park: half a century of struggle against the laws of gravity -- and the laws of the land.
Selfish Chris Teller pressures his older brother, a retired climber, to accompany him on a treacherous Alpine climb to loot the bodies of plane crash victims.
12 year-old Sebastian has decided not to follow his father and Angelina to Canada, deciding to stay in the alps to watch over Belle who has now become the mother of three beautiful pups. When a stranger arrives claiming to be Belle’s rightful owner, Sebastian will do all it takes to protect his best friend and her little ones.
Animals band together to save the day when the evil Otto Von Walrus hatches a sinister scheme to accelerate global warming and melt the Arctic Circle.
In the Antarctic, after an expedition with Dr. Davis McClaren, the sled dog trainer Jerry Shepherd has to leave the polar base with his colleagues due to the proximity of a heavy snow storm. He ties his dogs to be rescued after, but the mission is called-off and the dogs are left alone at their own fortune. For six months, Jerry tries to find a sponsor for a rescue mission.
A boy and his brother run away from home and hitch cross-country, with help from a girl they meet, to compete in the ultimate video-game championship.
Noreno, a half-Roman, is entrusted with the mission of crossing the snowy mountains of Armenia, swarming with Parthian patrols, to seek help for his slowly dying men.
Three mischievous children embark on a woodland odyssey when their mother sends them on an errand.
Missionary Father LaForgue travels to the New World in hopes of converting Algonquin Indians to Catholicism. Accepted, though warily, by the Indians, LaForgue travels with the Indians using his strict Catholic rules and ideals to try and impose his religion.
At the age of 10 years, young Rémi is snatched from his adoptive mother and entrusted to the signor Vitalis, a mysterious itinerant musician. Has its hard sides - he will learn the harsh life of acrobat and sing to win his bread. Accompanied by the faithful dog capi and of the small monkey Joli-Coeur, his long trip through France, made for meetings, friendships and mutual assistance, leads him to the secret of its origins.
Vladimir and Hector, two secret agents opposed in every way, are trying to recover a top secret material stolen by unknown intruders.
James Cameron and Simcha Jacobovici go on an adventure to find the lost city of Atlantis by using Greek philosopher Plato as a virtual treasure map.
A distinguished military leader whose reign was touched by great scandal, shocking betrayals and rousing victories. A simple shepherd boy chosen to be king, under the watchful eyes of prophet Samuel.
The aquatic adventure of the highly influential and fearlessly ambitious pioneer, innovator, filmmaker, researcher, and conservationist, Jacques-Yves Cousteau, covers roughly thirty years of an inarguably rich in achievements life.
Stéphane decides to move to the beautiful mountains of Cantal in order to reconnect with his 8-year-old daughter, Victoria, who has been silent since her mother's disappearance. During a walk in the forest, a shepherd gives Victoria a puppy named "Mystery" who will gradually give her a taste for life. But very quickly, Stéphane discovers that the animal is in reality a wolf… Despite the warnings and the danger of this situation, he cannot bring himself to separate his daughter from this seemingly harmless ball of hair.
On the Arabian Peninsula in the 1930s, two warring leaders come face to face. The victorious Nesib, Emir of Hobeika, lays down his peace terms to rival Amar, Sultan of Salmaah. The two men agree that neither can lay claim to the area of no man’s land between them called The Yellow Belt. In return, Nesib adopts Amar’s two boys Saleeh and Auda as a guarantee against invasion. Twelve years later, Saleeh and Auda have grown into young men. Saleeh, the warrior, itches to escape his gilded cage and return to his father’s land. Auda cares only for books and the pursuit of knowledge. One day, their adopted father Nesib is visited by an American from Texas. He tells the Emir that his land is blessed with oil and promises him riches beyond his wildest imagination. Nesib imagines a realm of infinite possibility, a kingdom with roads, schools and hospitals all paid for by the black gold beneath the barren sand. There is only one problem. The precious oil is located in the Yellow Belt.
The little swift Manou grows up believing he's a seagull. Learning to fly he finds out he never will be. Shocked, he runs away from home. He meets birds of his own species and finds out who he really is. When both seagulls and swifts face a dangerous threat, Manou becomes the hero of the day.
