October 22, 2025
The Banff Mountain Film Festival Turns 50!
Photographer Rita Taylor
By Jacqueline Louie
The Banff Mountain Film Festival is celebrating 50 years, and you’re invited.
Taking place Nov. 1 – 9 at the Banff Centre, the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival 50th Anniversary brings together mountain people, outdoor adventurers, filmmakers, authors and speakers from around the world to celebrate mountain films, books and culture.
“Great films — that really is our trademark,” says Joanna Croston, director – Mountain Culture at the Banff Centre. “Right from the beginning, this event has represented more than just watching films. It really represents a gathering of community and like-minded people who enjoy the outdoors, who are adventurous and who also want to preserve and protect the mountains we play in. The stories that are represented touch everyone at a human level, because they’re about overcoming challenges. It’s something you can relate to, even if you’ve never climbed a mountain.”
There is something for everyone at the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival. This year, the festival includes a special mountain symposium, Fire and Ice: The Stories We Tell, Nov. 4 ‒ 5, focused on ice, wildfire, and taking positive action to preserve the world’s remaining glaciers.
And in conjunction with the film festival, you can catch stellar events that make up the Banff Mountain Book Festival. Here are just a few of them:
Nov. 5 ‒ A celebration of the 50th anniversary of Japanese climber Junko Tabei’s first female ascent of Mt. Everest, with author Helen Rolfe and translator Yumiko Hiraki discussing their book on Tabei’s life, Honouring High Places, at the Whyte Museum in Banff.
book.whyte.org/eventpurchase.aspx?dateselected=11/
Nov. 6 ‒ Mountaineering Women, by author Joanna Croston, at the Banff Centre, with 20 stories from 20 climbers from around the world. Some of the women highlighted in the book will be in attendance, including Hazel Findlay, Lynn Hill, Brette Harrington, Sarah Hueniken, and Sharon Wood.
Nov. 6 ‒ Thomas Bell, author of Human Nature, explores remote cultures as he walks through the Himalayas in different seasons; and Jean McNeil, author of Latitudes, addresses the importance of listening to the living world.
Nov. 8 ‒ Craig Childs presents his new book, The Wild Dark: Finding the Night Sky in the Age of Light.
In addition to the ticketed events, there is a wide variety of free programming, a festival marketplace, kids’ programs, music, partner events, and mountain art exhibitions.
Photographer: Paul Ziska
The Banff Mountain Film Festival’s roots reach deep into the local community. One longstanding connection is with the Alpine Club of Canada (ACC), Canada’s national mountaineering organization, which is one of the festival’s founding partners.
Fifty years ago, there were already two mountain film festivals in existence: the Trento Film Festival in the Italian Dolomites, the world’s oldest mountain film festival (established in 1952), and Les Diablerets International Alpine Film Festival in Switzerland (established in 1969).
Starting the Banff Mountain Film Festival “might have been my idea,” says Banff-based mountaineer, historian, and Order of Canada recipient Chic Scott.
In the winter of 1974 ‒ 75, the executive of the ACC Banff Section, as it was then known, was brainstorming future club activities and projects. In addition to Scott, gathered around the table were Evelyn Matthews (née Moorhouse, who was ACC manager at the time), Betty Ware, and John Amatt, ACC Banff section chair.
Scott isn’t 100 percent certain whether it was he or Amatt who proposed holding a film festival in Banff, but the idea soon took off.
The first Banff Mountain Film Festival, held October 31, 1976, “was a huge hit, right from the beginning,” Scott recalls. “John was very ambitious, full of energy and a fine climber. He really pushed it.”
The Banff Mountain Film Festival now reaches beyond Banff to around the world, with a months-long world tour that goes to several hundred venues in 45 countries and on all continents, including the McMurdo Station South Pole Station in Antarctica. It’s the largest adventure film tour on Earth.
“It’s amazing,” Scott says. “It’s done more than anything since the Canadian Pacific Railway, and the creation of Canadian Mountain Holidays Heli-Skiing, to put Canadian mountains and Banff on the map.”
Reflecting on Banff’s place in the mountaineering world, Scott notes that “the European Alpine Clubs are huge and mountaineering is a national sport in places like Austria or Switzerland — it’s like hockey to them.” (The German Alpine Club has 1.5 million members, the Austrian Alpine Club 500,000 members, and the Swiss Alpine Club 150,000 members; in comparison, the Alpine Club of Canada has approximately 15,000 members).
Photographer: Rita Taylor
“So why is the biggest film festival of all of them in Canada? It’s because of the Banff Centre,” Scott says. “We have here in Banff the perfect place to hold a big film festival.”
The ACC is still closely connected to the film festival; it’s the festival’s longest running sponsor; every year the ACC has sponsored the award for Best film on Climbing, as well as the Banff Mountain Book Festival Competition, presenting the annual awards for Best Book.
John Amatt served as the Banff Mountain Film Festival’s founding director. Prior to Banff, he had already had experience with the world of mountain films, as one of the climbers in The Magnificent Mountain, a documentary on the 1966 British ascent of Alpamayo in southern Peru, which was named Best Mountaineering Film at the 1967 Trento Film Festival.
Amatt, who moved to Banff in 1973, joined the Banff Centre in 1975, working as a manager in the Banff Centre School of the Environment, where he was given a mandate to develop environmental programming.
“So because I had the ACC mandate and also the Banff Centre mandate, it made sense to me to try to develop something in the shoulder period — October‒November — between climbing and hiking season and skiing season.”
Amatt managed to find six mountaineering films from around the world, which he borrowed and screened at the Banff Centre. He promoted the screening as a free outdoor recreation-themed event, passing around the hat for donations. “We got a huge turnout — around 500 people showed up.”
After that, organizers decided to hold a film festival every year. “It just got bigger and bigger. I think we were very lucky to start it when we did, because we were just on the cusp of the rapid expansion of outdoor recreation around the world,” Amatt says.
Patsy Murphy and Amatt ran the festival for the first several years (after a decade, Amatt gave the hands-on work of running the festival to others, after he became involved in organizing the 1982 Canadian Everest Expedition. And Murphy, who recently retired from the Banff Centre, was involved in the Banff Mountain Film Festival from the very beginning, for almost every year until last year).
Now, there are at least 500 films entered in the festival competition every year, and the Banff Mountain Festival has a staff of 20.
Alex Honnold, The Banff Centre, Mountain Feastival, 2015
Photographer: Rita Taylor
Both Amatt and Scott point to Bernadette McDonald — former director of the Banff Film Festival, former vice president, The Banff Centre and director, Mountain Culture — who expanded the festival into a global event. Under her leadership, from 1988 ‒ 2006, the Banff Mountain Film Festival grew from a three-day regional festival to a nine-day event recognized as the gold standard of mountain film festivals around the world.
In her first year of running the Banff Mountain Film Festival, McDonald attended the Trento Film Festival. “I think it probably inspired me, more than anything, to take Banff to the next level. I wanted it to be a real player in the world of mountain film festivals,” she recalls.
Of Banff, McDonald says, “The location is world class. The fact that it takes place at a cultural institution that has all the theatres, the meeting rooms, and the spaces for the trade show, exhibitions, photography and art makes it a perfect venue for a festival.” Another huge plus for Banff, she adds, is the professionalism with which the festival is run. “Anyone who brings a film, book or presentation to the festival is treated in such a way that their presentation couldn’t be better.
“It’s growing in its reputation, and certainly the size — the size of the tour, which is global. It has a huge influence on mountain culture worldwide. It’s a real testament to the effort that everybody puts into it and the loyalty that people have towards it.”
Tickets are on sale at https://www.banffcentre.ca/film-fest
For more information, visit filmfest.banffcentre.ca/schedule, email banffmountainfestival@banffcentre.ca or call (403) 762-6347.
