I went and checked out the Banff film festival tour last week in Denver at the Paramount Theater. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this festival it is a film festival hosted by the Banff Centre, which is an art and mountain culture centre located in Banff Canada in the center of Banff National Park.  This centre helps to promote the mountain culture and lifestyle through art, and entertainment.  The movie festival is a collection of entries from around the world that represent outdoors sports and lifestyle in everything from rock climbing, and snowboarding to mountain exploration and philanthropic activates.

The showing I went to in Denver lived up to the Banff name and was really interesting.  In one video a group was whitewater-kayaking rivers in Africa that had swells larger than most oceans.  On this trip the group of Kayakers and the Sun light project also helped to educate African communities about using solar ovens to be able to purify water to help fight against bacteria.  They also raised money to be able to help donate these solar heaters to many of the communities they traveled through.  Another movie that took you down a little different path was a ice climbing team that went up a water fall in Canada that was falling apart under them the entire way, it really showed you how crazy some of these outdoor enthusiast can be.  Then there was a main feature that was really entertaining of a young family’s cross-Canada adventure to visit Canadian literary legend, Farley Mowat, using a canoe as their main means of transportation.  This film was put together really well and used really great lighting to help showcase the beautiful landscape and crazy adventure that this family undertook.

I would suggest getting on the Banff Center’s website and finding out when the tour will be coming your way.  And don’t worry I didn’t give away all of the secrets of the tour, they switch up the films from location to location so all of the winning footage can be shown.

Cheers!