Banff Mountain Film Festival Tour

Last night I had the opportunity to go see the Banff Mountain Film Festival Tour. What a brilliant way to make film festivals more accesible than ever!

Every year in the later fall they hold the film festival in Banff, Albert, Canada (this year's festival will run from October 31 - November 8th). The festival's theme is mountain sports (back country skiing, etc) and outdoor adventure (kayaking, rock climbing, etc). It definitely has it's target audience. The week-long festival is not for everyone, but their tour just might be.

After the festival ends they take several of their short films, and a few short-version edits of their highlighted feature films (generally all documentary style), and take them on tour. For one night you get a real film festival experience. There were 10 short films, some intro speakers, and even a few awesome raffles. Unfortunately I didn't win any of their prizes, but at only 3.5 hour running time it was a great evening and a unique experience - without the commitment of going to Canada for a week.

Knowing how incredible a full film festival experience can be and the frustration of how hard it can be to make the time to travel to them, this film festival tour is definitely something I'd like to see more festivals look to adopting. Each film had their website information posted and I was given resources to be able to buy copies of all of the films I was shown. It could really be a great grass root way to distribute short films and documentary films.