The Reel Rock Film Festival Returns
Reel Rock 7, the annual traveling adventure film festival, kicked off in Boulder, CO on Thursday to a sold-out audience. One of the leading festivals for the adventure-filmmaking industry, this year's films cover extreme Himalayan mountaineering, groundbreaking free-solo ascents, and a head-to-head battle to establish the world's first 5.15c route in Spain.
It's the start of an extensive annual tour. In 2011, Reel Rock screened in over 280 locations around the world, drew more than 65,000 audience members, and featured climber Tommy Caldwell, nine-year-old bouldering prodigy Ashima Shiraishi and fearless slackliner and BASE jumper Andy Lewis, among others.
Chris Sharma, Conrad Anker, Alex Honnold and Sasha DiGiulian are some of the stars in this year's films.
The founders of the Reel Rock Film Tour, Josh Lowell and Peter Mortimer, have produced and directed climbing and adventure films themselves for more than a decade. They started organizing small tours for their individual film releases, but soon realized there was demand for live events. The first Reel Rock event was held in 2006 and included 60 showings across the United States, Canada and Europe.