NewWorlds Festival: when climbing was exploring

The world’s smallest mountain film festival, a member of theInternational Alliance for Mountain Film for the past few months, presents its 13th edition with a new look.

The festival will be held from June 25 to July 5 in Rittana and Roccasparvera.

For the first time, Base Camp will not be, as per tradition, in tiny Valloriate, but in nearby Rittana-also in the lower Stura Valley of Cuneo, but a handful of kilometers away.

For organizational reasons, it was not possible to stay in Valloriate, but it is since 2019 that the festival has been bringing events to neighboring towns. It is no coincidence that the Kosmoki Cultural Association, which materially organizes the festival, is moving this year in close collaboration with the Montagna Futura Cultural District, which brings together the municipalities of Valloriate, Rittana, Moiola, Roccasparvera and numerous associations that collaborate with the District

Silvia Bongiovanni, who shares the artistic direction of New Worlds with Fabio Gianotti, explains –

A participatory and widespread festival, therefore, which this year has as its motto:
The world is ours.

The Future Mountain Cultural District and the festival’s film program will be presented during a press conference on Tuesday, June 4 at 5:30 p.m. at Open Baladin in Cuneo.

Fabio Gianotti says:

Each year we chose a theme that was a direction of travel, an idea to pursue. We are living in unstable times as we have not for many years. We cannot ignore it and we cannot fail to become aware that if we are not the ones to find the lost stability, no one will find it for us. So never more than this year do we say that “the world is ours” and we must be the ones to care for it

The guests and films on the bill are all under the banner of this acknowledgement.

The program

On Wednesday, June 26, at 9 p.m., it will be the turn of Polish mountaineer Krzysztof Wielicki with “When Climbing Was Exploring…

He was the fifth mountaineer in the world to complete the ascent of 14 “eight-thousanders” and theleading exponent of a generation of Polish mountaineers who in the 1980s first tackled the planet’s giants in the winter season.

Butmountaineering at that time, especially in Poland, did not feed.

And rope work, in 1980s Poland, was not that much in demand.

“We were good at making up homework. With a handle, roller and bucket they go out and paint the walls of tall buildings, cooling towers or smokestacks lending their super-skilled labor.

We were able to support our families with these activities, despite the fact that by law only a small portion of the income from our quota work could be allocated to us and to supporting families.”

The first theater of the challenge to the giants of the earth was indeedEverest, climbed by Wielicki with Leszek Cichy on February 17, 1980.

Then with Jerzy Kukuczka came Kangchenjunga in 1986 and Lhotse in December 1988, solo from Camp 3.

As expedition leader, until 2018 he was no less, leading other generations of climbers up Broad Peak in winter in 2013 and attempting K2 in 2018.

Let’s forget for a moment the base camps resupplied by helicopters, the teams of Sherpas preparing routes, resupplying camps along the ascent route, cell phones, satellite phones, and weathermen calculating your window of good weather useful for reaching the summit and especially for descending.

The generation of Wielicki, the same as Kukuczka, Majer, Zawada, Hazier, Piotrowsky, Wanda Rutkiewicz, (who is also that of Messner, Bonington, Scott), was able to live on the eight thousand one authentically exploratory mountaineering, going in search of the best lines on very difficult walls and braving the frost and blizzards of the winter season.

And he did so for many years with self-made materials, totally inadequate and often recycled equipment, such as welder’s goggles to protect his eyes from the glare of snow and glaciers.

After all, more did not concede the autarky of the countries of so-called real socialism.

We also wanted to write our names in the history of great mountaineering, but to do so we had to do something never done before, and so we inventedwinter mountaineering in the Himalayas