Festival Aims To Inspire A New Generation Of Adventurers

The NZ Mountain Film & Book Festival has been celebrating adventurous sports and lifestyles for two decades. It may have started out as an excuse for a bunch of climbing and snow enthusiasts to come together to watch cool movies, but 20 years on, the NZ Mountain Film Festival Charitable Trust is focused on supporting the wider community.

The non-profit Charitable Trust ascertains to promote, through its annual mountain film festival, healthy and active lifestyles, encourage youth to make small safe adventures in the outdoors, to inspire people to reach their full potential, to work cooperatively with others in the youth development area, to help people with disabilities get into outdoor activities; and to promote NZ arts, film, culture, environment and outdoor lifestyles.

Inspiring a new generation of adventurers is something particularly close to the heart of festival founder and director and Mark Sedon. An experienced ski guide and mountaineer, Sedon has been a lifelong adventure and travel enthusiast. His work has taken him to every corner of the globe. He has guided 20 Himalayan ski and climbing expeditions including summiting Mt Everest, climbed the Seven Summits, which is the highest mountain on each of the continents; guided in Europe, Scandinavia, Greenland, Alaska, the Arctic, the Antarctic, South America, Indonesia and extensively in New Zealand, amassing around 40 full time winters on snow.

While Sedon’s adventures have been at the extreme end of the spectrum, he says this is not necessarily what it’s about. Adventure is about personal goals. It doesn’t have to be Mt Everest, it could be having a go at walking up Wanaka’s Mt Iron for the first time or challenging yourself to try a new sport.

One of the ways the festival aims to inspire young people to be active in the outdoors is by getting them along to some of the festival sessions for free. For the past seven years, the trust has supported a schools’ programme. This year 170 students from Wānaka’s Mt Aspiring College have signed up to attend a session, and a further 100 will travel from Cromwell College and Maniototo Area School in Ranfurly with the Trust covering the cost of bus transport.

The Trust also provides free one-hour film sessions for families to attend in Wānaka, Lake Hāwea and Queenstown which are always well attended.

The festival organisers are also mindful of minimising the environmental impact of the event, working towards running a zero waste and carbon-neutral festival. Over the past three years they have reduced the waste produced by the 3500 visitors to the Wānaka event down to one rubbish bag, and just half a bag in Queenstown for another 1500 visitors.

This has been done by choosing café packaging that is compostable, not selling bottled water and providing free filtered water from a tap instead. Tea and coffee are provided for free to anyone who brings their own re-usable cup, and a compostable cup can be provided if necessary but must be placed in the hot compost bin afterwards and these are composted daily. Visitors are asked not to print tickets but to present them digitally instead.

Speakers’ flights or road travel is offset via Air New Zealand’s carbon offsetting programme or through a company named Ekos which uses the offset funds to support conservation projects in the Pacific Islands. In addition, the festival donates $200 per international speaker and $50 per NZ speaker to the Te Kākano Aotearoa Trust in Wānaka to plant trees locally. Festival visitors also have the option to ‘buy’ a tree at the festival café, adding a small donation to their order, which is then passed on to Te Kākano.

Sedon says inspiring people to adventure in the outdoors is an important part of the festival but this can only be done if people are also educated about and inspired to look after the natural environment.

Doors open on the 20th Mountain Film & Book Festival this Friday 24 June.

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