This year’s Banff Mountain Film Festival focuses on the exhilarating relationship between humans and the outdoors, expanding beyond purely natural themes. This Sunday, the festival will come to the Michigan Theater on its annual international tour.

The Banff Mountain Film Festival is an international competition featuring innovative footage on mountain subjects. The festival, which began in 1976, kicks off its world tour on the first weekend of November in Banff, Alberta, Canada.
When the Banff festival first came to Ann Arbor, the films were screened in Rackham Auditorium, but today this venue is too small to support the crowd. The audience the festival attracts is getting bigger — and not just in Ann Arbor, but all around the country.

“We are constantly receiving applications from groups and organizations that would like to bring the festival to their town. Each year, we look at our tour schedule and see if and where we can squeeze in a few new shows,” wrote Meagan Stewart, the world tour program coordinator of the festival, in an e-mail interview.

The film festival is sponsored by the Banff Centre, a non-profit institute which promotes mountain-related arts and culture. The Ann Arbor event is hosted by the campus group Outdoor Adventures.

Stewart stated that the festival “inspires creativity in adventure as well as filmmaking,” furthering the Banff Centre’s mission. “The films show ordinary people doing extraordinary things.”

Two of the festival’s most popular films will screen in Ann Arbor: “Take a Seat” and “First Ascent: Alone on the Wall.”

“Take a Seat” is a documentary focusing on the experience of one Dominic Gill, who also directed. With a tandem bike, a camera and a trailer, Gill traveled to the northern coast of Alaska in 2006. He desired to bike to the southernmost tip of South America finding strangers along the way to help him pedal the 220-pound bicycle. The film follows his two-year journey over two continents.

The second movie, contributed by Sender Films, “First Ascent: Alone at the Wall” follows 24-year-old Alex Honnold as he prepares himself for the first free solo climb of the Regular Northwest Face route on Yosemite’s Half Dome.
Eight films in total will premiere at the festival on Sunday. “We choose a wide array of films for the Ann Arbor spot to appeal to a wide range of people,” wrote Jeanette Stawski, director of Outdoor Adventures, in an e-mail interview with the Daily. “They touch on a variety of topics, including biking, boating, hiking, travel, skiing and animals.”

Each year, the festival receives more than 300 film submissions.

“The films come from more than 35 countries and range from productions created by high school students to professional crews working with companies like the BBC and National Geographic,” Stewart wrote.

In addition to a grand prize, seven other awards are distributed at the festival, including a Climbing award, a Short-Mountain Film (under fifteen minutes) award and Feature-Length Mountain Film (documentary or fiction) award. There is also a People’s Choice Award, selected by audience members.

After the Banff competition, 25 films are selected for the world tour. These films vary in style and theme, from climbing and kayaking to adventure, culture and the environment.

The world tour circles the globe, hitting countries in Europe, South America and Asia. In total, about 200,000 people attend 500 screenings in 285 locations. This year, the festival will visit approximately 140 cities in the U.S. alone. In each location, the host organization picks films from the pool of 25 to cater to its unique audience.

The proceeds gathered on the festival's whirlwind tour benefit the host organizations’ respective local communities.

“About 50 percent of the tour screenings benefit an outdoor program, community cause, or a nonprofit organization.