The mountain, a part of ourselves

The Festival was born at the same time as the boots, the stiff leather boots, those boots that would be softer only if spread with plentiful amounts of pig’s fat. It was 1952 and the studded boots and the war had finally gone. The former forever; the latter unfortunately not! War still recurs today, even at 6,000 metres in the Karakorum.

Mountaineering in the Fifties was changing from conquest and exploration to a sport activity, challenging all possible limits. In those years the mountaineer lived in a historical environment deeply interacting with the mountains. Decade after decade, the Festival has measured this development in the sense that the great John Ball illustrated in his famous book Peaks, passes and glaciers, published in 1859.

The Festival has acknowledged that passage: from Samivel’s romantic film, Cimes et meravilles winner of the “Gran Premio Città di Trento”, to the films submitted in the contest in the latest festivals. Sometimes there is a huge difference of style and concept among them, but the goal is the same: mountain in its different realities, the respect of the environment, man’s work, mountaineers’ hard life, mountaineering pioneers … until the international climbers in the 1980s relayed their feats to an appreciative audience in the Auditorium.

This year, other men will tell of their enterprises: the lonely knights of the steep walls; a French myth that defined mountain as “a part of myself”; the very strong athletes of Russian mountaineering. And then there is the cinema, the soul of the Festival. Many important films will introduce all fans into a real, sometimes cruel and always fascinating world. It is the world of mountain, exploration and adventure.

The Festival had to put the stiff-sole boots with their leather softened by fat in the back of its memory. Yet, it did so with great respect. For years, the Festival has continued its cultural ascent using as a base the miraculous “Formula-1 mixture”. Because everything has changed. Except that mountains are still there.

Italo Zandonella Callegher
President Film Festival Trento