As the only film festival to be hosted on every continent — including Antarctica — the Banff Mountain Film Festival made its stop in Syracuse on Tuesday night, showing a series of films featuring the great outdoors.

Coming out of Alberta, Canada, the world’s largest film festival showcased the works of 11 adventurous filmmakers and their cinematic journey with nature in Grant Auditorium on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m.

From the tops of mountains, to the depths of the Grand Canyon and into the cold glaciers of Antarctica, each film showed a different exploration of the vast wonders of both the world and the human spirit.

“I liked that the films are all adventures and pushing the limits with people challenging themselves,” said Tannis McCartney, a geology graduate student who attended the festival.

One of the movies, a documentary titled, “Gimp Monkeys,” showed exactly what McCartney described. It followed a trio of amputees climbing a mountain together, becoming the first all-disabled team to ascend the 7,573-foot tall El Capitan in Yosemite Valley.

The festival’s grand prize-winning film, “Crossing the Ice,” featured a first-person perspective of two best friends from Australia and their mission to be the first expedition team to travel from the edge of the continent to the South Pole — on a pair of skis. The trek took more than three months, with the cruel Antarctic blizzard challenging the will of the two glacial amateurs.

“I liked that they made the movies themselves,” said Max Gade, an earth sciences graduate student. “It showed the brotherhood between the two, combined with the extreme outdoor adventure.”

While the festival honored inspirational feats of human will and the dangers of intense environments, it also made a note to show the lighter side of people and nature. The film “On Thin Ice” was a lighthearted music video starring a drunk man ice skating on a frozen ocean and skinny dipping in the sub-zero sea, the whole time continuing to take swigs from his bottle of vodka.

Along with exemplifying both harsh and fun times in nature, the festival also showcased urban exploration and extreme sports in the honorable mention-winner, “Industrial Revolutions,” an upbeat music video showing extraordinary feats of mountain bicycle acrobatics in an abandoned iron yard, creating a unique concrete circus.

“I’m a big fan of extreme sports and love biking, and when you do stuff like that with a bike, I think it’s absolutely incredible,” said Ed Milde, a geology graduate student.

The Syracuse University Outing Club, a student organization run by SU and State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry students, brought the festival to SU’s campus. The group sets up hikes and outdoor trips for members all year long, similar to the ones featured in the film festival, but much more beginner-friendly.

Said Gade: “I’ve always been outdoorsy. These outdoor adventures were always interesting to me.”

Published on February 20, 2013 at 1:11 am

Contact Alfred: alng@syr.edu

@alfredwkng