Mount Everest will be the main theme of this year’s “City of Trento†Mountain Film Festival. On 29 May 1953 New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay stepped on to the earth’s highest point, the 8848 m summit of Mount Everest on the border between Nepal and China.
Fifty years after that historic ascent, the Trento Film Festival (27 April – 4 May) is organising a series of special events under the slogan “Everest: uno, nessuno, centomila†(Everest: one, none, a hundred thousand) in commemoration of that achievement and the subsequent history of climbing, which has been amply documented in mountain films, including many shown at the Trento Film Festival. And the first reference to the “roof of the world†is found on the official poster of this year’s festival (the 51st). Represented on the poster is the original playbill of the film made about the successful 1953 English expedition under the leadership of Lord Hunt.
The festival’s 2003 programme includes “Everest Day†(Thursday 1 May), devoted to a celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the ascent, with a special evening in the presence of famous climbers who have reached the roof of the world (including all the Italian climbers), and a film retrospective (Everest: 50 years of triumph and tragedy on the roof of the world) featuring the film on the 1924 British expedition of Mallory and Irvine, and the one on the victorious 1953 expedition led by Lord Hunt.
A second retrospective will be devoted to Nanga Parbat (Nanga Parbat: the bare mountain), the eight-thousand metre peak conquered by Hermann Buhl a few months after the first ascent of Everest. And Everest is also the subject of a film which the British director Leo Dickinson has made especially for the Trento Mountain Film Festival, and which this year will receive the Alliance for Mountain Film Award for his career: this is a montage with images from all his Everest documentaries.
The International Jury which will judge the films in the festival will have as its Chairman the Austrian climber and filmmaker Kurt Diemberger, and as members Spiro Dalla Porta Xidias (Ita), Leo Dickinson (GB), Christine Cauquelin (Fra), and Marina Alexandrovna Razbejkina (Ru).
Along with documentaries on climbing, mountains, sport and adventure, the environment and sustainable development, the feature film competition includes several films previewed for the first time in Italy.
The official site of the “City of Trento†Mountain Film Festival
