The Alpine Film Festival

A festival that has been gaining momentum in Romania

Ana-Maria Cononovici, 23.07.2019, 01:12

‘If You’re Pushing the Edge,
Eventually You Find the Edge’ is the line delivered by the protagonist of the
movie Free Solo, which got the Academy Award. It also seems to be the slogan
of the Alpine Film Festival, taking place in late February- early March in
three mountain resorts in Romania. Brasov, Predeal, and Busteni were the hosts
of the fourth edition of the only festival dedicated to mountain culture and
education in Romania.

The festival is
an event built around film, books, and photography, with the intent to promote
mountain civilization with its heritage tourism, ecological, economic,
educational, and athletic values.

Dan Burlac,
artistic director of the festival, told us why he felt the need to have such an
event:

I believe that the mountains need such an event dedicated to mountain culture
and education, because the mountains are fascinating. Which is why every weekend, people who love
the mountains, and not only them, always go there. And there is a saying I
love: going to the mountains means going home. And I believe that this was what
created the urge to come up with this festival, dedicated to movies about
mountains. However, it is not only about movies, it’s also about books,
photography, athletic competitions, mountain culture and education in all its
complexity.

Dan Burlac confirmed that the
festival had a spectacular start:

We opened the festival with the award-winning film ‘Free Solo’, it was
a tremendous success, it sold out, it had a record audience in the Grand Hall
of Brasov University.

The feature
documentary ‘Free Solo’ by Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi won the Best
Documentary award at the 91st edition of the Oscars. It was its
creator’s first nomination in this category. Alex Honnold, the free climber who
featured in the movie, told CNBC: I’ve worked on my climbing skills so much
that my comfort zone is quite large. So these things that I’m doing that look pretty
outrageous, to me they seem quite normal.

After such a start, the entertaining
events kept on coming, according to Dan Burlac:

It has been an eventful week, with
extremely interesting screenings, with movies about mountains, with the
Romanian competition, with the international competition, the theaters were
packed with film lovers in the Romanian competition and we were very happy
because of that, as we also want to develop the mountain film production here
in Romania. We had three sold-out screenings, it was a movie made by two people
from Brasov, Dan Dinu and Cosmin Dumitrache, about the American parks. It was
an extraordinary screening, with a cinema theater packed with almost 500
people. We were so happy the screening of the film was premiered in Brasov. The
photography exhibition themed ‘The Forest’ and mounted in the Assembly Square
is accessible to those traveling to Brasov until late March. It is an
extraordinary exhibition, with very beautiful photographs. We had a very interesting
debate, cinema and nature, chaired by Irina Margareta Nistor, with guests from
Spain, Italy, France who talked about how you can promote the mountain area
through images, and also natural parks and other ecological assets. It was an
extremely successful event. Obviously we had the Great Gala of Romanian Film,
where awards went to winners in the Athlete of the Year and Sports Master
category as well as to the winner in Romania’s best climber category, and for
the first time ever in the festival prizes went to those in mountain running,
hang-gliding and orienteering category.

Other
local color events were the Mountain Climbing Day in Busteni on March 2nd, a day dedicated to
Romanian climbing with the Climbing gala, now in its 41st edition,
this year’s theme being new generations; then there was the Ski Schools Cup in
Predeal, the ski touring Contest, the Predeal Vertical Race, on March 3rd, then we had the Predeal Mountain
Rescue Cup’s inaugural edition on February 28th, but also an event themed the Mountain Cuisine,
including mountain food sampling.

Here is what Dan Burlac also had to say on the issue.

It was a complex event, we are very
happy people have started to come to the festival, the festival caught on, we
hope we can expand in the years to come. We had keynote guests, we had Aldo
Audisio, the director of the biggest Mountain Museum, based in Turin, and also
a member of the Alliance for Mountain Film Festival’s Steering Committee. We
also had the director of the Mountain Cinema in France, Michel Zalio, who is
also a mountain guide and a very good filmmaker, we had a French Mountain
Gendarme, who came from Chamonix, he explained how it works in the Mont Blanc
massif, again an event that drew a very large audience. And for children, we
had wonderful things, as Cristian Lascu, the renowned explorer and
speleologist, in a hall packed with children, gave a conference on speleology,
about Emil Racovita in Antarctica. It was an edition that made us all very
happy and I believe the Alpine Film Festival managed to find its place!

It was a festival replete with breathtaking images
and adrenaline rush.