Austin Vince- Adventure Travel Film Festival

Friday 5pm 17th August – Monday 3pm 20th August

Epic adventure travel films made between 1920’s through to present day, plus guest speakers, photography and video workshops. 75 quid without food and 111 quid half board.

Above and Beyond Dream (2010)

… 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 of these but the soaring perfection of this film lies elsewhere. -Video 69 minutes,

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…. “perhaps Australia’s national cinema’s most well known best kept secret”.- 16mm B/W, 65 mins

Call of the White (2009)

An all-woman team attacks the South Pole and is victorious!.. start googling ‘Felicity Aston’. ..This alpha-female ice maiden is a legend in the European snow-scene … In 2009 she led a group of women on a 38-day slog to the south pole. .. Felicity’s ‘can do’ attitude inspired her to recruit a diverse team from across the Commonwealth… she insisted that the line-up was 100% novice. This is class ‘A’ inspirational uncut adventure gold-dust. The ladies were, by definition, out of their element. – Colour Video 43 minutes

Four Strokes of Luck (2011)

When the curators had the outline of this film  explained, over a crackling telephone line from Australia… they thought …Thatcould never have happened. In 2010 Roly Stokes and Adam Broadbent… riding their motorbikes from Chile, north up to Alaska. The roadless ‘Darien Gap’ that straddles Colombia and Panama means that everyone flies or freights their bikes over this irritating hiatus in the Pan American Highway. Not so our two Australian heroes! Oh no, their plan is to  ‘acquire’ an abandoned lifeboat… What happens next beggars belief. – Video 75 minutes

Grass (1924)

…..this stunning film serves up great granite slabs of astonishing social history and anthropology. It’s unusual to bring the Third Reich into this brochure but here goes: … Hitler’s favourite film was King Kong. …brought to the screen by Ernest B. Schoedsack in 1933. Less well known is that in 1924, Schoedsack was on another journey, tramping across Turkey, Mesopotamia and Persia filming one of the great documentaries of all time. … the migration of the Persian Bakhtiari tribe from the arid climes of today’s Iraq to the rich pastures further north in what is now Iran….  thousands of humans, crawling ant-like over the frozen passes..

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.….Damien and Delphine’s film is a healthy example of …the dreamy low velocity cadence of cycling with the film-makers urgent urge to ‘move the story on’.  Video 52 minutes

Mazungu (2008)

A film that adds weight to the notion that all the coolest adventures are happening on water. ..The mighty Congo River… Harwood sets the bar very, very high about what can be achieved if you are patient, creative and diligent. As well as being totally adventurous, this film is a crucial document of Equatorial African social history in the new millennium. Video 48 mins

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. …Maciek Swinarski and his Polish co-riders have established a global cult following, and rightly so.  Video 65 minutes

North Korea: A Day in the Life (2004)

All at once uplifting and soul-destroying. 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 place about which we know almost zero.

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!

Roadside USA (1997)

Austin Vince … recruited his fellow school teacher and co-rider, Clive Greenhough,  …and then hitch-hiked down to Miami, across to Los Angeles, north up to Portland then back across the mid-west finally returning to New York 7 weeks and 11,000 miles later. They were determined to get to know real America and they did this by simply filming an interview in the car of everyone that gave them a ride!

The Alastair Humphreys Micro-Films (2011)

Alastair Humphreys.. spent over 4 years cycling round the world, a journey of 46,000 miles through 60 countries and 5 continents.

In 2011 …. instead of exotic foreign adventures, he worked to encourage people to get outside, get out of their comfort zone and go somewhere they’ve never been. Not only that, but also to make a simple film about their experience. A microadventure is an adventure that is close to home, cheap, simple, short, and yet very effective.

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.This is a Technicolor South America, bursting with life and vigour. A continent as yet unsullied by the toxic cocktail of hyper-inflation and military dictatorship. Streets awash with salsa, Catholic iconography, sharp suited latin-metropolita

Twice Upon a Caravan (1933)

A terrific solo motorcycle adventure and priceless sociological archive all in one. All delivered with a hushed breath of quiet humility and gratitude.

In 1932 New Yorker and architecture student Robert Fulton Jnr …scrounged a Douglas motorcycle and set off overland, destination Japan, . Eighty years later his journey would be legitimately impressive but imagine the world he crossed;.. He traversed a Europe plunging head-first into war, a Middle East still firmly under British control and an India destined to be British forever.. into Chiang Kai Shek’s pre-communist China brought him into a society almost frozen in time. Robert Fulton is a hero of this festival since he had the energy and diligence to shoot thirteen hours of film and pioneer a route which in only a few years would become impossible.

Wakhan (2009)

This film is full of hope, love and Afghanistan. Kyszytof Samborski ….Totally oblivious to the traditional ‘off-the-beaten-track’ destinations he and his buddy Iza head for Afghanistan. .. their story only starts once their motorbikes have already ridden 7000 miles from their native Poland to the Wakhan district …so hugely unvisited (even by Afghans!) that the only way to viably penetrate it is by dirt-bike.

Sherborne Girls School, Bradford Road, Sherborne, Dorset DT9 3QN from Friday 17th August – Monday 20th August 2012.

ARRIVE: 5pm on Friday 17^th August
Please don’t arrive before this as the camping fields will be in use.

DEPART: by 3pm on Monday 20^th August

PLEASE NOTE: The festival officially starts on the morning of Saturday 18^th and ends at lunchtime on Monday 20^th August. The Friday night will be a low-key warm-up for the main event — just hanging out, setting up camp and getting in the party mood. There will be no catering or bar on the Friday night. But we will show a surprise film that isn’t in the programme! To be announced on the night…

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