Above and Beyond Dream (2010)
In a field of already spectacular films this masterpiece will have you shaking your head in disbelief and muttering: Could anything be more perfect? Benjamin Jordan’s idea was simple; to power paraglide across Canada, set a Guinness world record but above all, to raise funds for children’s camps across his great nation. He achieved all [...]
Back of Beyond (1954)
A stunning verité epic that whilst ostensibly a documentary contains elements of fiction and fantasy that make for a rather unsettling experience. Never has straight factual been so weird. An award-winning Australian documentary film produced and directed by John Heyer for the Shell Film Unit. In terms of breadth of distribution, awards garnered, and critical [...]
Call of the White (2009)
The Adventure Travel Film Festival is always keen to debunk the myth that the square jawed ‘adventurer’ is male. An all-woman team attacks the South Pole and is victorious! Turn your computer on and start googling ‘Felicity Aston’. This staggeringly adventurous alpha-female ice maiden is a legend in the European snow-scene and rightly so. In [...]
Cycles South (1971)
This film pre-dates Easy Rider and On Any Sunday and trumps both! Probably the most politically-incorrect road movie you will ever see. Tired of their everyday life of drinking and women-chasing, three guys jump on their BSAs with $300 apiece and ride from Colorado to Panama to indulge in some, er, drinking and women-chasing. This [...]
First Overland (1958)
This 16mm film is so bursting with colour and life it almost hurts to know this magical age of innocence is gone forever. In 1955 six students from Oxford and Cambridge set out in two Land-Rovers to drive from London to Singapore. And why not? After all, no-one had ever done it before. Several expeditions [...]
Four Strokes of Luck (2011)
When the curators had the outline of this film explained to them, over a crackling telephone line from Australia, they thought they must have misunderstood. That could never have happened. In 2010 Roly Stokes and Adam Broadbent were doing something that most folk would find pretty exciting; they were riding their motorbikes from Chile, north [...]
Grass (1924)
As well as jaw-dropping long distance travel this stunning film serves up great granite slabs of astonishing social history and anthropology. Once you’ve seen it, you will be richer. It’s unusual to bring the Third Reich into this brochure but here goes: Allegedly, Hitler’s favourite film was King Kong. The giant ape’s tragic journey from [...]
Himalayan Adventure (1958)
An inspiring short film from the 1950s ‘housewife explorers’ who defied convention and made history. In 1958, three English housewives bought a Land Rover and drove it all the way from London to Zanskar, then a part of Tibet. Over five months Anne Davies, Eve Sims, and Antonia Deacock drove 16,000 miles before travelling another [...]
Hobo (1991)
Our hobo hosts take us on a railroad journey through a country they think has lost its way. In 1991 Irish film-maker John T Davis, set off on a dangerous, illegal 2,000 mile journey across America, to make ‘Hobo’, his remarkable award-winning intensely personal portrait of an ex-Vietnam vet turned Hobo, who calls himself Beargrease. [...]
Le Grande Detour (2009)
With no unkindness intended, round-the-world bicyclists are a dime a dozen. However, within that listing, gifted, artistic film-makers are super rare — but we’ve got one here. Delphine and Damien have done a truly stupendous around the world tandem bicycle ride. But cycling is a slow, steady rhythmic world that doesn’t favour those who want [...]
Man Zou: Beijing to Shanghai (2008)
Four American friends and their Chinese guide set out on a month long trip to bicycle 1,000 miles of China’s countryside, filming their adventures along the way. Independently produced, this feature-length documentary was shot in China three weeks after the Olympics. Without support vehicles, they were able to capture an intimate and unfiltered look at [...]
Mazungu (2008)
A film that adds weight to the notion that all the coolest adventures are happening on water. The mighty Congo River rises in Zambia and after 3000 miles of lazy uncoiling, discharges into the Atlantic. Recent foreign office posts advise that the interior of The Democratic Republic of Congo is not to be visited by [...]
Mondo Enduro (1995)
This isn’t the world’s most famous motorcycle TV show, but it should be. Starring and directed by our very own curator, Austin Vince, Mondo Enduro is the original adventure-motorcycling movie that inspired all others, including Ewan MacGregor’s Long Way Round. In 1995 seven school friends set off from London on second-hand Suzuki DR350s with home-made [...]
Motosyberia (2007)
An incredibly imaginative film of one of the toughest motorcycle trips ever undertaken, a masterpiece! Maciek Swinarski is one of the top adventure film-makers in the world today. His latest film is the story of a seriously hardcore motorcycle ride from his native Poland to Magadan in eastern Siberia, and has made him a household [...]
MotoSyberia 2.0 – Regeneration (2010)
Adventurous, surreal and utterly original. There is nobody in the world today attempting such penetrating and frankly, bizarre forays into the interior of Russia’s remote far east. No-one that is, except Maciek Swinarski… Swinarski and his Polish co-riders have established a global cult following, and rightly so. Some might argue that riding a motorbike along [...]
North Korea: A Day in the Life (2004)
All at once uplifting and soul-destroying. Every human being should see this film to better understand the complexities of our species. This is the only film at this year’s festival that doesn’t really chronicle a long distance journey. However, it has been included in the schedule because of its mind-boggling insight into a far away [...]
Paddle to Seattle (2010)
A 1300-mile sea kayak trip down Canada’s Pacific coast. Breathtaking scenery galore but also an utterly perfectly crafted travel film. Watch and learn! Have you ever built a wooden canoe from scratch, packed it with snacks and camping gear and then spent the next three months with one of your best friends? If not then [...]
Ride the Divide (2009)
The Ride the Divide mountain bike race is barely comprehensible, such is the scale of ambition required to organise it and the sheer old-fashioned guts strength to complete it! From Canada to Mexico the cyclists furiously pedal 2700 miles of trails and paths. Since the ‘Divide’ is, of course, the Rocky Mountains, they are forced [...]
Riding Solo to the Top of the World (2006)
Not only an inspirational journey but also a call to arms to pick up a camera and get shootin’! Riding Solo is about filmmaker Gaurav Jani’s solo motorcycle journey from Mumbai to one of the remotest places in the world, the Changthang Plateau in Ladakh bordering China. The film is even more extraordinary for the [...]
Roadside USA (1997)
If there’s one thing you can say about the USA, it’s that you can’t generalise about Americans… Austin Vince started his hitch-hiking career in 1977 as a means of avoiding the long hikes demanded of his scout troop, the 11th Harrow. His first longish American hitch wasn’t until he was 22 with a warm-up four [...]
The Alastair Humphreys Micro-Films (2011)
Alastair Humphreys is a British Adventurer, Author and Blogger. He spent over 4 years cycling round the world, a journey of 46,000 miles through 60 countries and 5 continents. 2011 was Alastair’s Year of Microadventure, a whole year when, instead of exotic foreign adventures, he worked to encourage people to get outside, get out of [...]
The Headless Valley (1957)
A 1950s married couple take an extreme canoeing trip into the Northwest Territories with not a scrap of Goretex in sight… In 1957 Melvin and Ethel Ross of Calgary, Canada, travelled alone by canoe through one of the roughest and remote areas of the world to reach their destination of the Headless Valley in the [...]
The Mongol Rally (2009)
The most recently shot of this year’s entries, an invigorating splurge of long distance silliness that many think is all but extinguished in the modern world. In 2001 a couple of inebriated young Englishmen bought an over-priced, under-maintained Fiat 126 and attempted to drive to Mongolia. They failed miserably. But the seeds of the now [...]
The Pan-American Highway (1960)
A superb historical document that showcases, in glorious colour, a South America that to a large extent, has gone forever. Students of this film festival will remember the Canadian couple, Mel and Ethel Ross and Headless Valley, the film of their legendary assault on the white water rivers of the Yukon in 1955. Five years [...]