Verdon - The Show Must Go On

È Pericoloso Sporgersi is Robert Nicod's first short film, shot in 1985, featuring four young climbers, two women, Catherine Destivelle and Monique Dalmasso, and two men, Alain Bultel and Marc Lecomte-Durouil, in the Verdon Gorges. In a natural setting of cliffs, rivers, sinkholes and vertical waterfalls, Catherine Destivelle and Monique Dalmasso climb the Bombé de Pichenibule. This progression, filmed as a female climbing adventure, represents a successful first 7b+ ascent for the French champion. The film received the Genziana D'Argento for best sports film at the Trento Film Festival in 1986.

Two climbers, a photographer and an eagle in the western setting of Monument Valley, USA. The climbers, who are experts, reveal the secrets of their acrobatic skill. The photographer is the spectator who often involuntarily creates comical situations.

The film shows Catherine Destivelle's trip to Dogon Country, in Mali, where she will make spectacular free solo rock climbing ascents in the sun-warmed cliffs of Bandiagara. Destivelle is accompanied on this trip by a friend climber, Lucien Abbet. A film by Pierre-Antoine Hiroz produced in 1987 by Paradoxe and also featuring Tidjani Koné, Ibrahim Dolo, and the Dogon inhabitants of the Bandiagara Escarpment. The film won the Genziana D'argento for best free climbing film at the Trento Film Festival in 1987.

In 2014, during a trip, American Tim Bruns discovered cliffs in a small village five minutes north of Ramallah in Palestine and got to work equipping all the easy routes, then setting up climbing routes so that we can start teaching people how to climb. Bruns and Harris also opened Wadi Climbing, the first indoor climbing gym in Palestine. Today, gathered in the conflict-torn hills of Palestine, a diverse team of Bedouins, activists and urban professionals have embraced climbing as a much-needed respite from the burden of Israeli occupation. American writer and climber Andrew Bisharat visits the West Bank to explore his own roots and the power of climbing to transform lives. This documentary is part of the Reel Rock 17 series released in 2023.

Life By The Fingertips is a documentary film by Jean-Paul Janssen released in 1982, directing Patrick Edlinger totally living his passion, climbing, which he practices here solo ("with bare hands"), it that is, without a rope or any kind of insurance. The film begins with a session of solo sea crossings on the Piade site near Toulon. In the second part, Patrick Edlinger trains in Buoux before carving a solo route in this now famous climbing site. This mythical film in more than one way is considered the first climbing film, that is to say where climbing is an activity in itself and not a means of preparing for mountaineering. His media success was such that he propelled Patrick Edlinger to the rank of world star, and above all he made climbing known to the general public, and was even nominated for the César for best documentary short film.

Between music and climbing, the film Rockin' Cuba retraces the exploration of the Vinales Valley in Cuba by six Franco-Swiss climbers: Nina Caprez, Mélissa Le Nevé, Mike Fuselier, Enzo Oddo, Cedric Lachat and Seb Boussogne. The landscapes are magnificent, the images by Julien Nadiras sumptuous, the humor always around the corner and the work on the music by Vladimir Cellier, simply incredible.

An Accidental Life is a deeply personal and vulnerable portrait of Quinn Brett, an ambitious, record-setting climber who strives to make meaning out of tragedy in the years following a near-fatal rock climbing accident on El Capitan that left her paralyzed.

In March 2002, the Italian climbers of the Ragni di Lecco group embarked on an expedition across the Algerian Sahara. Mario Conti, Simone Pedeferri, Marco Vago and Massimo Bosetti, during a long journey, completed numerous ascents: Ihaghen, Adaouda, Tizouyag Sud, Dôme de l'Éléphant (Tesnou mountain range) and around thirty new boulders, including La Gazelle (7b) and Le Guépard (7c). But the main objective was the opening of a new climbing route on the face of Garet El Djenoun, in the Tefedest mountain range. The 400-meter route, named "Mariolino Fotonico", has 13 pitches (8 new, plus 3 spans with "Mosquitoes" and 2 with a "Voie des Espagnoles" from 1985), with a maximum difficulty of 8a/A1. This film has a special significance, as it is the first film of the rebirth of the Ragni group, after the 90s marked by tragedy, and at the same time the end of the tragic black decade in Algeria which raged between 1992 and 2002.

Twenty-three year old Alex Honnold is taking the high-stakes sport of free solo climbing to new heights. Climbing truly massive walls without a rope, and zero chance of survival if he falls, Alex is calm and fearless (except when it comes to girls). But attempting the 2,000-foot wall of Half Dome, the greatest free solo ever attempted, would finally teach Alex the meaning of fear.

The documentary chronicles the journey and climbs of a group of young French people on the cliffs rising above Wadi Rum, in the desert south of Jordan, guided by two very athletic local Bedouins. The climbers set out to discover new, isolated places, fueled by a spirit of adventure. These places were little known, at least as climbing areas in 1988.

A team of 12 men, 5 sailors, a doctor, a writer, a film crew, and 3 mountaineers, Jean-Marc Boivin, Thierry Leroy, and Dominique Marchal, set off by sailboat from Mar del Plata in Argentina to reach Riso Patron in Chile, via the Strait of Magellan, the Patagonian Channels, and Falcon Fjord. Their goal is to climb Riso Patron and then make the first crossing of the Campo de Hielo Sur glacier, or Hielo Continental Patagónico, to meet up with the sailors in Puerto Williams on Navarino Island in Chile, a village at the end of the world. After three attempts and an accident for Leroy, who was repatriated, they gave up, crossed the glacier and rejoined the boat, to set off for Cape Horn to climb the South face, knowing that the weather was good one day a month... On January 20, 1983, Jean-Marc Boivin and Dominique Marchal succeeded in making the first ascent of the South face of Cape Horn.

Robert Paragot, a mountaineering legend, was also a great Bleausard. In addition to his far-flung alpine-style expeditions (the south face of Aconcagua, Tour de Mustagh, Jannu), he is the very image of the modest city dweller who devoted himself passionately to high-level mountaineering. Like any good Parisian climber, Robert Paragot began his climbing career in the Fontainebleau forest. A true rock school where he would open several boulders. His son, Christophe Paragot, paid tribute to him, a year after his death, by climbing all the boulders opened by his father in Fontainebleau in the same day. He tells us about an era, a spirit, an emblematic place through his memories and some delightful anecdotes. Far from spectacular images and sporting exploits, this film speaks of a passion, a story of climbing that was made accessible to all. In memory of a great name in mountaineering who, from the modest blocks of the forest, climbed to the highest peaks in the world.