Who are SteepEdge?

 

We are passionate about the great outdoors, and our mission is to make available all the best outdoor adventure films, no matter how rare or obscure, to watch when or where you want.

 

Steepedge was founded by  Brian Hall and John Porter with the support of Chris Bonington, Andrew Denton,  Ben Tye and Nicola Sands. Lately, the team at Vertebrate Graphics, the company behind award-winning book publishers Vertebrate Publishing, have joined the party.

 

Our collective experiences range from the summit of Everest to bouldering in Fontainebleau, exploring the Patagonian ice cap to climbing the big walls of Yosemite, mountain biking in Moab to skiing across the glaciers and peaks of the Alps.

 

SteepEdge grew out of a passion for these beautiful landscapes and the excitement and pleasure of mountain and outdoor sports. The culture and environment intrigues our minds and drives us to study, help and campaign to preserve this remote world.

 

Mountains have always inspired writers, painters, photographers and latterly filmmakers. Caught on celluloid by the Abrahams in the early 1900s in the UK and later by Franck & Riefenstahl during the 1930s in Germany, mountains have been the backdrop for countless movies. Documentaries recording the expeditions such as The First Ascent of Everest (1953), drama in the Peruvian Andes with Touching the Void (2003) or the hardest moves on El Cap in The Prophet (2011).

 

This genre of filmmaking inspired Hall and Porter to found the Kendal Mountain Film Festival in 1979 with Bonington as its active patron. When in 2008 they transferred the running to a community charity, it had developed into one of the world’s top three mountain festivals.

 

The idea of SteepEdge was born at Kendal, to create a virtual mountain film festival to show archive, contemporary, classic and niche mountain and adventure related films, available 24/7 and worldwide to the outdoor community. Films for the climber, skier, trekker, polar explorer, mountain biker, BASE jumper, kayaker, glacial scientist, Buddhist philosopher, snow leopard zoologist, artist, photographer and environmentalist. 

We hope you enjoy the show.