NZ Mountain Film Festival History: Since 2002

Wanaka Mountain Slide Festival, 2002
The idea started when Mark Sedon was at a film festival in Australia called Escalade in 1998. He came home and with wife Jo, setup the first festival, called the “Wanaka Mountain Slide Festival” in October 2002. They got a couple of sponsors, hired the Lake Wanaka Centre and found some speakers. They included Mark, Guy Cotter, Dave Hiddleston, Lionel Clay, and a bunch more….. It was a beautiful spring Labour Weekend, the first nice weather weekend of the summer. Way too nice to be inside, but they still had quite a few visitors (sometimes 400 packed in for the evening speakers). The festival theme is created, which has stayed the same since 2002, despite several name changes, is “A Celebration of Adventurous Sports and Lifestyles”. One speaker, Shaun Barnett who was flying out of Wellington got delayed due to fog, so we had to think of something to fill the space. Guy Cotter leant a film which was played, much to the enjoyment of the visitors and to the surprise to Mark of how good the film looked on the big screen.

After this first festival, the idea was to start New Zealand’s first and only international adventure film makers competition for the next festival and also run the festival in Autumn, when the days are shorter and there is less to do in Wanaka.

Free Spirit Festival, 2004
The next festival was in June 2004 (Queens Birthday Weekend) and re-named the “Free Spirit Festival”. More sponsors (four!!) got on board and Colin Monteath, Lydia Bradey, amongst others gave slide show presentations using the ‘old fashion’ 35mm slide projectors (the last year these were to be used). The $2000 in prize money attracted 40 film makers to enter the competition so Jo and Mark Sedon came up with a judging form to help select the best to screen. Mark and Jo took the financial risk of renting the state of the art digital projector, a backup and the biggest screen available in NZ. They decided to use the Lake Wanaka Tiered seating system so that ever seat in the house was good thus limiting door sales down from a possible 400 with seats on the floor, to 280 with the tiered setup.

Festival Passes were sold for $50 to all shows and this proved very popular. They ran a world record attempt at a Dyno Competition and thrilled 250 spectators with young strong shirt-less lads leaping over 2m in the warm autumn sunshine. There was $500 for the winners and another $500 tantalizingly close for a new world record which they just missed. Mark came up with the Hiddleston/MacQueen Award for the best NZ made film in remembrance of two great friends and personalities recently lost to the mountains.

Wanaka Mountain Film festival, 2005
At the risk of being the festival with many names, they again changed the name in 2005, to the “Wanaka Mountain Film festival”. The event started gathering momentum and with nine big name sponsors they started inviting international speakers. Athol Whimp from Australia, plus Kiwis like Erik Monasterio and Sean Waters. For the first time Festival Passes to all shows sold out and Jo Sedon started noticing a small group of loyal followers who would watch every film!! The Dyno competition was as popular as ever, the Trade Show and Art Exhibitions were born. Cold pre-winter inversion made for great weather for indoor film watching. Jo and Mark continued to solely judge the films, in their evenings after their regular jobs, which approached 50 entrants in 2005.

Wanaka Mountain Film festival, 2006
After many years of trying Peter Hillary finally came down to do a talk, Simon Carter came over from Australia, Greg Child almost made it but had to cancel at the last moment. Local adventurer Bruce Dowrick and kiwi rock climber Jonathan Clearwater more than made up for the space. Workshops were added to the schedule and the Queens Birthday event started bringing a couple of hundred people to town. All slide show presentations were delivered in digital and the Lake Wanaka Centre was often full to the brim with excited arm chair adventurers. Mark and Jo send out postcards around the world to film makers promoting the festival and also Wanaka as NZ’s premier Alpine Village, which continues each year.

Wanaka Mountain Film festival, 2007
The speaker focus in 2007 was predominantly Kiwi speakers with Lani Evans, Hellen Nortje, Allan Uren, Mark Inglis and Paul Knott. Jo and Mark bought on Wanaka marketing team eveNZ and for the third year running sold out of Festival Passes. Despite this, they still seem to manage to get everyone who turns up into each show, although some do elect to stand on the sides (maybe some of the folk who watched all the 35 films needed to stand for a couple!!). A social session was introduced, live music and a charity auction (for the Kahu Youth Trust).

The Dyno was held at Base Camp which proved popular and Nepalese prayer flags were hung around Wanaka township. Film entrants reached a massive 75 entrants and the date of the festival was changed to the first week of the school holidays (July) due to the fact that Mark’s work often took him away guiding to the Himalayas in April/May (Queens Birthday Weekend) during the busy post pre-monsoon climbing season. This meant Jo had to solely judge all the films, then she got a panel of Lake Hawea film enthusiasts (6) to pick the Best NZ made film. Lake Wanaka Tourism recognises the event as beneficial to Wanaka’s events calendar and comes on as a sponsor. Macpac is signed up as the major naming sponsor.

New Zealand Mountain Film festival, 2008
The fourth name change to the festival proved most popular with national and even international media running double the amount of stories of past years with huge interest in the event. With the estimated 500-600 visitors the festival brings to Wanaka annually, the forecasted economical benefits for the region have almost reached the half million dollar mark.

The charity auction in 2008 is to raise money for the Mingma Norbu Sherpa Memorial Fund which trains Nepalese environmentalists in New Zealand Universities. Three workshops, two of which are free to attend, two musicians, 85 films entered with 45 finalists being shown is the biggest selection yet. Five days long (one extra day), six speakers (including flying one in from America), numerous photographers in the art exhibition and almost a dozen companies displaying gear at the Trade Show. New for 2008 is the Ice Sculpturing Competition, with a $500 first prize (replacing the Dyno). The sculptures will be cutting up their blocks from early morning on Friday July 4th with the finished products on display and judged at the opening night at 7pm. The New Zealand Alpine Club are taking the films on a national tour through the small towns of New Zealand over winter.

Still the festival is almost entirely run by Mark and Jo Sedon while they continue with their respective jobs and the Operations Manager at Adventure Consultants and Real Estate Agent for the Professionals.

NZ Mountain Film Festival, 2009

The 2009 event was the biggest yet. TV3 covered the NZ made film champs as well as shorts from the films. We showed 51 films (a record) and raised $7000 for Quentin Smith's auction to get him a new sit ski. We had an ice sculpturing demonstration and loads of speakers and workshops. The national tour is on again and the shows went digital making for better stream lined film starts.

NZ Mountain Film festival 2010

People were coming out of both screenings of the NZMFF’s Grand Prize winning film Mount St.Elias saying “my palms were sweating from excitement and anticipation right through the film”.  The 2010 NZ Mountain Film Festival screened 53 films, 8 speakers, art displays, trade show and lots of general socializing. Festival highlights included a talk from Kylie Wakelin about her recent trip to become the first New Zealand woman to ski 900km from Antarctica’s coast all the way to the South Pole. Will Gadd, from Canada had a full house for his thrilling talk and has since been seen skiing, paragliding, speedflying, rock climbing and kayaking around Wanaka in his week long visit to the region. He was blown away by Wanaka’s beauty and amount of world class adventure activities. He is joking about making a film on doing 20 adventure sports in Wanaka in 24 hrs....

The People’s Choice award was a rare tie, between the Asgard Project and Take a Seat which had also won the best film on Climbing and best film n Adventurous Sports & Lifestyles respectively.

The 2011 NZ Mountain Film festival planning has already started.....

NZ Mountain Film Festival Office