For some people, living life to the fullest is about working out your individual physical and mental limits – and then testing where they really begin and end.
Every issue of Living with Disability is full of stories about humans challenging themselves and their environments to discover new ways of living their lives.
Now, if you’re a keen armchair adventurer, who’d like to watch some of the world’s top extreme sport athletes caught on film, the 2024 Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour has arrived - coming to Scotland, Wales, England, Ireland and Northern Ireland throughout 2024.
The World Tour, featuring a selection of this year’s best adventure sport documentaries gives you the chance to see six short award-winning international films – everyone a masterpiece movie-making. The Tour is split into two programmes, the Red and Blue series.
Banff’s Red Film Programme features the film Soundscape, featuring climber Eric Weihenmayer (pictured above), a fully blind adventure athlete and author as he ascends a massive rock face deep in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains.
Soundscape shares Eric’s sightless experience of climbing a mountain via echo location, touch and imagination.
The Blue Film Programme features the overall festival winner Subterranean, chronicling two expeditions through the Canadian Rocky Mountains. The film features muddy crawls, vertical pits, underwater squeezes and plenty of filming challenges.
You’ll marvel at the achievements both of the athletes featured and particularly of the people behind the cameras catching their every move.
Every single film on offer is life-affirming and will take you on an unexpected journey underground; flying off a mountain; skiing down a precipitous slope or climbing up a sheer cliff face, as though you were there.
Our real favourite, though, was a tiny and beautifully crafted four-minute film from paraglider pilot and video maker Jean Baptiste Chandelier called ‘No Way!’ (pictured above) that the team chose to end the screenings. It’s an hilarious, beautifully edited film that put a smile on everyone’s faces.
For further information on the films, tour dates and venues go to https://www.banff-uk.com/