Film program – 22 September, Thursday

Big Hall

 13:30 / 14:22 – Facing the void, 2020, France, Marc Brulard, 52`

In the collective imagination, mountaineering is seen as an elitist and dangerous activity. When the mainstream press talks about mountaineering, it is generally to relate a drama or an exploit. The mountaineers are then placed in two categories. On the one hand, reckless supermen, engaged in a death struggle with the mountains. On the other, irresponsible unconscious people, that it is too often necessary to get out of a bad patch by mobilizing important means of rescue. But does this negative image of mountaineering match reality? What if mountaineering had another face, that of a little-known practice, more widespread than one thinks? What if mountaineering was not only a matter of supermen, but also had a feminine face?

 14:22 / 14:43 – Angakusajaujuq / The Shaman’s Apprentice, 2020, Canada, Zacharias Kunuk, 21` – animation

A young shaman must face her first test—a trip underground to visit Kannaaluk, The One Below, who holds the answers to why a community member has become ill. Facing dark spirits and physical challenges, she must trust her mentor’s teachings and learn to control her fear.

14:43 /  15:00 – 51 x 3000, 2021, Spain, Javier Cuevas, Adrián Azorín, 17`

Jonatan García, one of today’s most promising Spanish alpinists, embarks on an ambitious project in the Pyrenees. During the course of it, he shows us his way of understanding both mountain and life.

15:00 / 17:00 – break – See exhibitions

Turzestvena Hall

 11:30 /  12:50 –  BERG, 2021, Netherlands, Slovenia, Joke Olthaar, 79`

BERG is a visual experience of a vast mountain landscape and the insignificance of man in it. A trip of concentrated black and white images with a minimalistic soundtrack forms a primal memory of a universal mythical mountain.The film opens with a series of stones, rocks and peaks, sometimes wide, sometimes in close up. Shadows moving over the surfaces. Your eyes follow the lines, the holes that have eroded over the years. You lose your sense of scale. Suddenly emerging small black human figures give away the real proportions. The weather conditions are getting worse. Rising and hanging fog. Thunderstorm and falling rain. Huge clouds overwhelm the peaks. A roaring helicopter as a sign of danger. Dated film footage of a rescue team during salvages after fatal accidents, suddenly interrupts the majestic flow of the silent landscape. Despite their gruesome content, these moments have a strangely enchanting beauty, igniting a deep respect for everything around us.

 12:50 – 13:30 – break

13:30 / 14:22 – Erhard Loretan, respire l’ ordeur du ciel, 2011, Switzerland, 52` – special memory screening for the great Erhard Loretan. Loretan was an official guest in Bulgaria on Banskofilmfest 2010. 

Erhard Loretan, respirer l’odeur du ciel is a documentary about alpinism that takes place in Everest and Mont Epperly. It was directed by Benoît Aymon in 2011 and produced by RTS. It is a part of the series Passe moi les jumelles. It features Erhard Loretan, André Georges, Pierre-Alain Morand, Frédéric Roux, Pere Nicolas Buttet, Romolo Nottaris and others.

14:22 /  14:34 – ALETSCH NEGATIVE, 2019, Switzerland, Laurence Bonvin, 11`

A journey to the center of the glacier. Aletsch is the longest and largest glacier of the Alps. At the Konkordia Platz, were the three glaciers that constitute it meet, the ice is about 900 meters deep. Glaciologists predict that by the end of this century most glaciers of the Alps will have disappeared and only fragments of Aletsch will remain. Aletsch Negative offers a sensory and visually compelling experience as well as a double reflection on the nature of the moving image, it’s relation to still images and time. Animation is used to make the ineluctable process even more visible. The frozen instant is multiplied to create the illusion of movement, a kind of analogy of the transformation of ice into streaming waters. From micro to macro, image by image and sequence by sequence, with a soundtrack exclusively made of field recordings, the film reveals the growing intensity and acceleration of the melting process. An elegy.

14:34 / 16:00 – Alpenland, 2022, Austria, Robert Schabus, 88`

The Alps are not only a spectacular landscape at the heart of Europe, but also home to 13 million people in eight countries. The numerous languages and dialects spoken here and the various ways of living reflect the cultural diversity of this unique region. In his feature documentary Alpenland, Robert Schabus paints an insightful and sympathetic portrait of this region, travelling to meet a family of mountain farmers in Austria, visiting a small manufacturing company in the village of Premana in Italy and going to famous skiing resorts like Méribel in France or Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Bavaria, Germany. The idyll is bearing the seeds of its own ruin: tourism creates jobs and destroys nature, the traffic cuts through Alpine valleys and the impact of climate change is unmistakable in the Alps. At the same time, there are people for whom defying the harsh vagaries of nature is a centuries-old tradition and they are not willing to abandon their homes. Alpenland is the story of people caught between the two opposite poles of economy and ecology, and who have a deep bond with their living environments despite these difficult conditions.

16:00 / 17:00 – break – See exhibitions

 17:00 / 20:00 – See presentations Big Hall

Central Square “Nikola Vapcarov“

 20:15 / 20:43 –  North 6, 2021, Germany, Frank Kretschmann, Tom Dauer, 28`

NORTH 6 – with Roger Schäli und Simon Gietl; They are considered as the six greatests of the Alps: the north faces of Grosser Zinne, Piz Badile, Matterhorn, Eiger, Petit Dru and Grandes Jorasses. Almost 70 years ago, the French mountain guide Gaston Rébuffat already wrote about the shady escapes in his classic “Stars and Storms”: “A dream fulfilled gives birth to a new dream, and now I wanted to conquer all the great north faces.” Mastering them all is a lifetime goal for many mountaineers, the Grand Slam of alpinism. The Swiss Roger Schäli and the South Tyrolean Simon Gietl have climbed all six walls several times. But they, too, have a new dream: their goal is to climb the iconic walls nonstop and to cover the distances between the summits under their own power. When they set out on a cool autumn morning, they have an almost impossible undertaking ahead of them: 1100 kilometers of distance, 30770 meters of ascent and 29470 meters of descent, which they plan to accomplish on road bikes, on foot, on ropes and by paraglider. This is also a special mountain trip for the experienced exceptionalists. Cause they know all that the Great North Walls should only be approached with caution and humility.; a film by Frank Kretschmann and Tom Dauer.

20:43 / 21:33 –  La pantalla andina / The Andean Screen, 2021, Spain, Carmina Balaguer, 49`

A Northwestern Argentinian teacher leads a mobile cinema crew to the most isolated school in the Jujuy high-altitude valleys, undergoing a 20-hour journey on foot in adverse conditions. Their arrival involves us in the high-altitude educational values, portraying the isolation in the Andean worlds and how communities engage with the earth. “The Andean Screen” is a poetic analogy between cinema and travel; a choral history spun by Silvina Velázquez, principal of the school, whose tenacity introduces a new paradigm for the women of the valleys.