Diamonds are Forever, a Peter Mortimer film about Steph Davis’s recent free solos won the People’s Choice Award for Stone Night on January 19. It will be shown along with the other two winners (Let It Ride: The Craig Kelly Story for Snow Night and Sliding Liberia for Surf Night) at the People’s Choice Ceremony on Sunday January 20. [Photo] David Swift
Jackson, Wyoming – January 20, 2008 – The Alpinist Film Festival’s Stone Night opened to a full house at the Walk Festival Hall in Teton Village, Wyoming last night, January 19. The audience chose Diamonds are Forever to win the 2008 Stone Night People’s Choice Award. Peter Mortimer completed the film about Steph Davis’s recent free solos mere hours before the show. Mortimer and Davis presented the world premiere in person.
Diamonds are Forever documents Davis’s solitary journey to America’s premier alpine rock wall: the Diamond on Long’s Peak, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado. Aiming “to learn about fear” and begin a new life, as Davis said in her presentation, she twice free soloed–climbed without ropes or other protection–the thousand-foot vertical wall via the Casual Route (5.10c), becoming the first woman to free solo the Diamond. Mortimer’s film captured her next remarkable free solo feats on that wall, two times up Pervertical Sanctuary (5.11-), a route that had been free soloed only by Derek Hersey, the British climber acclaimed for pushing the boundaries of free soloing.
Mortimer and Davis completed filming less than a week before, on Castleton Tower near Davis’s home, Moab, Utah. When Davis presented the film she had not yet seen the final cut.
“Having Peter, one of the world’s best climbing filmmakers, and Steph, one of the world’s best rock climbers, on stage together was dynamite,” said AFF director Christian Beckwith. “Steph’s presentation was strikingly candid, a reminder that, with enough introspection, we can re-sculpture our perspective.”
Of the seven films shown on Stone Night, Diamonds was one of four US, North American or world premieres. “What an interesting and fantastic turn of events, to have The Obscurist, The Aerialist and Diamonds win back-to-back-to-back awards,” Beckwith said. The Obscurist, a film by Mortimer featuring Cedar Wright in Yosemite, and The Aerialist, a film by Brad Lynch about the free solos and other daring pursuits of Dean Potter–Davis’s husband–had their world premieres at the 2006 and 2007 Alpinist Film Festivals. Both films won their respective Stone Night People’s Choice Award.
Diamonds are Forever will be presented at the 2008 People’s Choice Ceremonies, held in Jackson at the Center for the Arts on January 20, 2008. Let It Ride: The Craig Kelly Story, which won Snow Night’s People’s Choice Award, and Sliding Liberia, which won Surf Night’s People’s Choice Award will also show on January 20. The three audience-selected films will have a shot at the 2008 Alpinist Film Festival Grand Prize. The audience will choose the Grand Prize winner at the January 20 Ceremony.
The filmmakers of Diamonds are Forever, Sliding Liberia and Let It Ride each will receive a $750 gift certificate from Patagonia for winning their respective night’s People’s Choice Award. The Grand Prize winner will receive an additional Patagonia gift certificate worth $1,500.
Tickets are $20 for the People’s Choice Ceremonies. Tickets and additional information can be found online at www.alpinist.com/film_festival. To date, every event in The Alpinist Film Festival’s three-year history has sold out.
About The Alpinist Film Festival
The Alpinist Film Festival celebrates the adventure lifestyle across disciplines and generations with three nights of film in skiing, surfing and climbing. The Festival’s mission is to advance the art of cinematographic storytelling as it underscores the unity among the adventure lifestyle communities. A portion of every year’s proceeds are donated to charities that help preserve the places of our inspiration. Because one of these places is our planet, beginning in 2008, the Festival will purchase carbon offsets to counteract its carbon footprint.
About Alpinist Magazine
Hailed by Italian climbing legend Reinhold Messner as “The best climbing magazine in the world today,” Alpinist Magazine is an archival-quality, quarterly publication dedicated to world alpinism and adventure climbing. The pages of Alpinist capture the art of ascent in its most powerful manifestations, presenting an articulation of climbing and its lifestyle that matches the intensity of the pursuit itself. Alpinist has been awarded three Maggie Awards, for Best Quarterly/Consumer Division, Best Overall Design, and Best Electronic Newsletter, and was featured in a seven-page article in Outside Magazine (“The Purists”) in March 2005. The magazine’s editorial and publishing offices are based in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and online at www.alpinist.com.