Kendal Mountain Festival 2018: Report

© KMF

The Kendal Mountain Festival has finished for another year. Having grown to become the major fixture on the UK's outdoor social calendar, the festival keeps going from strength to strength. With a full programme of films, talks, workshops, outdoor events, gear stands and beer, this year's fun-packed weekend was the biggest and probably the best yet.

Attracting crowds of over 12,000 into Kendal each year, the Kendal Mountain Festival plays host to a huge range of adventure filmmakers, writers, outdoor athletes and luminaries of the climbing scene. It also brings a big cash boost to the local economy, at least half of which must be bar bills.

The Basecamp Village was busier than ever and featured a free programme of speakers hosted by the enthusiastic Liam Lonsdale. Rab and Mountain Equipment, among others, had a sterling lineup of some of their top athletes, the BMC stand was celebrating the achievements of top British women climbers and mountaineers with a fantastic display, and as usual, you could get any item of clothing fixed by the team at Patagonia. The UKC/UKH/Rockfax team was back with piles of discounted guidebooks and some quality demoing of the Rockfax app.

"I hope that more than a few UKC readers were at the event, and had a good time" said Director of KMF, Clive Allen.

"We do try to keep it real; our small team here are climbers, walkers, skiers, runners, bikers, paragliders and open-water swimmers so we want to make every element of the event something that we'd be desperate to attend. The irony is, we almost never get to sit in and see the end result! In particular this year we were humbled to have three of the Festival's founders at the event - John Porter, Brian Hall and Ian Wall - and it's good to know they feel the Festival is in safe hands. On the flip side, it was frustrating that the weather throughout was perfect for cragging... "

A Q&A with the Rab stars  © KMF
A Q&A with the Rab stars
© KMF

Extreme Basecamp scenes: now to be recreated at home with your best down jackets and beards.  © KMF
Extreme Basecamp scenes: now to be recreated at home with your best down jackets and beards.
© KMF

2018 Kendal Mountain Film Awards

The 2018 Kendal Mountain Film Awards were announced on Saturday night at a ceremony hosted by comedian and outdoor enthusiast Ed Byrne.

A lot of buzz this year centred on big budget US climbing films Dawn Wall and Free Solo. But as ever the field was very strong and packed with unexpected wild cards.

The People's Choice Award, which was voted for by audiences attending this year's festival, went to the film Underdog.

FURTHER UPDATE: It only went and flippin won 🏆 UPDATE: Huuuuuuuuuge thanks and hugs and kisses to everyone who voted for Underdog for the @kendalmountainfestival People's Choice Award. You ruddy rock. _ A last minute surge pushed it up to second place (out of 90 films). Not bad that. 🍾📽😃🐶 _ Underdog is also now on general release and can be purchased for a small fee via link in bio. _ PLEASE VOTE NOW! Some very good friends of mine (@sfm_films) worked incredibly hard and took a financial gamble to make a film about a jog I did. With 1hr left to VOTE in the prestigious Kendal Mountain Festival People's Choice Award, Underdog is in fourth place. Anyone can VOTE (link in bio) very quickly and simply, without signing up to anything. Thankyouthankyouthankyouiloveyou x #woof 🐶

A post shared by Damian Hall (@ultra_damo) on

Jury Chair, Keme Nzerem said:

"The 2018 film collection represents the best of the best the adventure and mountain film community has to offer. It was no mean feat watching, discussing and deciding on which of the 90 odd films were worthy of being winners. More than ever it is the story that makes us connect with and enjoy other people's adventures, not just what is someone climbing, or free soloing, but why? Not just where is someone adventuring, but what does their journey say about them, the people they are with and the places they visit? And in so many cases we loved how filmmakers showed us intimate details of their lives, fears, hopes and dreams, both as athletes and ordinary people. We love how all films we chose resonate on both an emotional and intellectual level, we know they will also resonate with anyone with an interest in film too.

"Advances in technology, of course, mean the technical quality of filmmaking is better than ever. We were blown away by how the winners in the technical categories captured images and sound in difficult circumstances and brought us a fresh new perspective on environments many of us are very familiar with."

The Dawn Wall producer Zachary Barr introduces the film  © KMF
The Dawn Wall producer Zachary Barr introduces the film
© KMF

Grand Prize Free Solo

Judges Special Prize Wonderful Losers

Judges Special Prize Chasing Monsters

Best Short Film AMA

Best Environment Film The Island and the Whales

Best Mountaineering Film La Congenialità The Attitude of Gratitude

Best Adventure and Exploration Zabadast

Best Climbing Film The Dawn Wall

Best Culture Ascending Afghanistan

Best Adventure Sport Divided

Best Sound Parasol Peak

Best Visual This Mountain Life

People's Choice Underdog

Boardman Tasker Prize

'Limits of the Known' by David Roberts won the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature. Roberts takes a look at his personal relationship to extreme risk and tries to rationalise why so many have committed their lives to the desperate pursuit of adventure. We interviewed David at the recent Banff festival, so watch this space for that.

Stay tuned for our UKC interview with David Roberts  © Natalie Berry - UKC
Stay tuned for our UKC interview with David Roberts
© Natalie Berry - UKC

UKClimbing's own Statement of Youth had a preview screening on Friday night, followed by a Q&A with Chris Gore. Directed by UKC Editor Nick Brown, it describes the anarchic exploits of a small group of climbers in the 1980's who would do anything to climb full-time: sleeping in caves underneath crags, shoplifting for food and clothes, and living off the dole. These punks were living outside the rest of society and went on to become some of the most influential figures in the history of British climbing.


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19 Nov, 2018

As  good as its ever been and the most crowded II'd seen it.

There is one major area they do need to sort out: the new  food outlets in the brewery yard. The outside caterers were much lower quality, too samey and a real pain at times (starting late, finishing early and  breaking down). Goodness knows why they dumped the excellent quality, better time flexibility  and variety  from the local providers. Apparently this is totally the fault of the hosts,  The Brewery Arts centre, and not the festival organisers. That they wouldn't support the local community given the amazing quality and past success is worrying. Rins was an especially heavy loss for me... mass film viewings were a joy with such caffeine.

https://rinscoffee.com

19 Nov, 2018

I was disappointed with the films available via the film pass, there was only one that I would recommend someone going out of their way to watch (the dragons back race) which unfathomably was only shown twice all weekend (incidentally, despite this, the voting website showed this as having won the people's choice award by a huge amount but this article says otherwise).

Despite trying to watch as many climbing and mountaineering films as possible I probably watched more paddling films than anything else (although at least two of these were better than any of the climbing films I saw).

I thought Bloodmoon was the best of a bad bunch of climbing/mountaineering films.

The program of free talks looked really good on the Saturday.

EDIT: I forgot, the Dave McLeod film 24/8 is really good but I'd seen that before

EDIT 2: I guess we see so many quality free films these days the bar is now very high. Very good films are only considered 'meh', possibly why I enjoyed some of the non-climbing ones as I have little to compare them with.

19 Nov, 2018

Agree  - If it was the Brewery that made that call then it is in some ways even worse - Should be supporting local providers.

I went to the 'Best of' on Sunday evening and was slightly underwhelmed. The most painful film was the winner for best sound - Paradise Peak - maybe I am completely uncultured but it was slightly like a Monty Python sketch - a group of musicians carrying voila, trombones etc up a via ferrata for 30mins!

The paddle sports session was excellent but really badly attended given the top names there.

Basecamp has outgrown its space, too crowded.

19 Nov, 2018

Now I'm even more confused: the article says

But later lists

... so pick whichever of the 3 you fancy, I guess?

19 Nov, 2018

If you went to the people's vote page (https://www.myvote.io/contest/5167760682254336 - now a dead link) last night after voting had closed it showed all the films ranked. The ranking used total number of votes rather than rating out of 5 but the Dragon back race film was comfortably ahead in both with over 1000 votes and 4.9+ rating. Regardless it was a good film so hopefully will resurface elsewhere (possibly on iPlayer on S4C)

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