Women’s mountains and adventure at the 57th TrentoFilmfestival

60 works of art at the 2009 edition, shot by female directors on mountains all over the world.

Woman is the protagonist of the 57th TrentoFilmfestival, held from 21st April to 3rd May, the oldest cinema festival in the world about mountains, exploration and adventure.

Woman as director: for this edition, 60 films have been shot by women and 24 of them will be screened for the public. Of these, 14 are among the 42 films in competition. Moreover, women as protagonists in mountain societies and communities are the real ‘strong link’, as discussed by Nuto Revelli in his book published in the 1970s about the exodus from the western valleys of Piedmont.

There are the women who farm the land, raise children, guard animals, pass on culture, the point of reference of a society whose movement is often synonym of social disintegration, but also women devoted to adventure and mountaineering. Some of the films in competition at the 57th TrentoFilmfestival analyse the relationship between women and mountains from an anthropological point of view. Himalaya terre des femmes by the French director Marianne Claude, sensitively and poetically shows the hard living conditions in a village at 4000 metres, in the Himalayan region of Zanskar. There, women of four generations look after the village while men are away hunting. In the film Before Tomorrow by the directors Madeline Piujuq Ivalu and Marie Helene Cousineau, which has already presented at the Sundance Film Festival, an elderly woman belonging to an Arctic tribe is the protagonist of a story about the difficult relationship with the new white conquerors and survival in such hard lands. Also from France, Dolma du bout du monde by Anne, Véronique and Erik Lapied, a family who directed this film about the life and difficult but fascinating history of a small Himalayan community. As directors, women are able to capture many aspects of the female universe, including the harshest, such as in Ba yue shi wu (August the 15th). Directed by the young Chinese Xuan Jiang, this short film on sexual abuse, is inspired by a true story in a remote Chinese mountain area.

Cine director Valeria Allievi, formerly a director of fashion shows and a fashion film producer, has long since chosen to direct and produce mountain films. She presents Karl at TrentoFilmfestival, a documentary film about Karl Unterkircher, the mountaineer from Alto Adige who tragically died in July 2008 during an attempt on the unconquered face Rakhiot of Nanga Parbat. It is a documentary film which reveals this mountaineer, calm and cheerful but also stubborn and determined, who faced every challenge with positive energy.

A woman, mountain and solitude are the protagonists of Cheyenne, trent’anni by Michele Trentini, which tells of the life of Cheyenne, a young shepherdess who has been living in the Rabbi valley since 2001. Loneliness in the grazing lands and meeting group of tourists mark the summer of this girl, spent in nature and freedom. By contrast women’s mountaineering is the theme of Lightning Strike – Arwa Tower, by Christine Koop and Stephan Siegrist: the story of two roped parties engaged in the first ascent of Arwa Tower, Garhwal Himalaya, India. The first roped party consists of Stephan Siegrist, the Swiss mountaineer known throughout the world, Thomas Senf and Denis Burdet. The second party consists of two quite different women, Ines Papert (world ice climbing champion) and Anita Kolar. The two stronger female mountaineers are forced to abandon their attempt just 200 metres from the summit.

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