Feature Films 49

Wild Waters Finite: The Climate Of Change

WATER RIDE & FLOW NATURE &

WORLD PREMIERE HAVANA LIBRE ENVIRONMENT

THE ICE MILE

21.00 Thursday 17 November Brewery Arts - Screen 2

Follow Sunderland swimmer Becca Harvey as she trains towards her Ice Mile. This beautiful film takes us on a journey from the solitude of lockdowns to being back in the water - an exploration of grief, healing, friendship and the power of outdoor swimming. RACHEL SARAH UK / 75’

DEAD SEA GUARDIANS

16.30 Saturday 19 November Brewery Arts - Digital Lounge

The Dead Sea is threatened by overconsumption and poor water management. To draw attention to the plight of the vanishing sea, three swimmers from Jordan, Israel and Palestine embark on a heroic and unprecedented journey across the Dead Sea. YOAV KLEINMAN & IDO GLASS ISRAEL / 90’

WILD WATERS

21.00 Saturday 19 November Shakespeare Centre

French kayaker Nouria Newman prepares to become the first female to run a 100ft (30m) waterfall. However, running some of the world’s hardest whitewater isn’t Nouria’s biggest life challenge... DAVID ARNAUD FRANCE / 90’

16.00 Friday 18 November 12.00 Sunday 20 November Brewery Arts - Digital Lounge

After years of surfing being illegal, a diehard group of Cuban surfers rising up against their government to legitimise their biggest passion. COREY MCLEAN USA / 90’

RIDE THE WAVE

19.15 Friday 18 November Brewery Arts - Screen 2

Follow 14 year old Ben Larg on his quest to become a big wave surfer – riding one of the biggest cold water waves in the world at Mullaghmore, Ireland. Danger, opportunity, and dilemma collide, propelling Ben and his family towards an unknown destiny. MARTYN ROBERTSON UK / 90’

SAVAGE WATERS

21.00 Saturday 19 November Brewery Arts - Theatre

A tantalising passage in a 19th century treasure hunter’s journal inspires modern adventurers Matt Knight and Andrew Cotton to find and surf a spectacular wave in some of the most remote and dangerous waters of the Atlantic ocean.

Presented by Dryrobe

MIKEY CORKER FRANCE / 105’

THRIVING: A JOURNEY INTO REGENERATIVE FARMING

19.30 Thursday 17 November Brewery Arts - Screen 2

Clare Dyson sets out with her Welsh Cob to visit as many regenerative farms as possible. A tale exploring the changing landscape of Cumbria and how we can help combat the climate emergency. DOM BUSH UK / 35’

FINITE: THE CLIMATE OF CHANGE

12.00 Friday 18 November Brewery Arts - Studio

Concerned German citizens put their bodies on the line to save an ancient forest from Europe’s largest coal mine, forming an unlikely alliance with a frustrated community in England who are forced into action to protect their homes from a new mine. RICH FELGATE UK / 100’

THE PATH OF THE PANTHER

18.30 Saturday 19 November Brewery Arts - Digital Lounge

Carlton Ward finds himself on the front line between renewal and destruction that has pushed the Everglades panther to the brink of collapse. We explore the habitat and the first legislation of its kind to address habitat fragmentation and species extinction across the globe. ERIC BENDICK USA / 105’

KENDAL AT RHEGED!

We’re delighted to increase the film programme at our satellite venue, Rheged. Rheged, Redhills, Penrith, CA11 0DQ Tickets from rheged.com

BEST OF KENDAL - RETROSPECTIVE

19.30 Thursday 17 November

A special retrospective film evening showing adventure films from the last decade.

HAVANA LIBRE

19.30 Friday 18 November

After years of surfing being illegal, a diehard group of Cuban surfers rising up against their government to legitimise their biggest passion.

Havana Libre

PASANG: IN THE SHADOW OF EVEREST

19.30 Saturday 19 November

Discover Pasang Lhamu Sherpa’s tragic and inspiring journey to become the first Nepali woman to summit Everest in 1993.

BEST OF KENDAL 2022

19.30 Sunday 20 November

A chance to watch a selection of the award-winning films from this year’s Festival.

Thriving

THRIVING: A JOURNEY INTO REGENERATIVE FARMING

16.00 Sunday 27 November

Thriving tracks Cumbrian based adventurer Clare Dyson and her horse Merry who, earlier this year, travelled over 150 miles through the mountains and valleys of the Lake District. On the way Clare visited regenerative farmers who are working hard to improve biodiversity and help combat climate change whilst at the same time producing food. We’re joined on stage by Clare Dyson and local filmmakers Dom Bush and Helen Lawrie to introduce and discuss this insightful new film.

WELCOME TO

KENDAL MOUNTAIN BOOK FESTIVAL

Welcome to our 2022 Book Festival where authors, poets and musicians join us from across the world to share their stories and journeys. Topical and revelant, we hope to create a space where people can connect with each other to experience events that entertain, surprise and move them.

Our Book Festival Director, Paul Scully says, “Our Festival is a place where we can reflect on our relationships with nature, landscape, society and to each other. A space where people are challenged to be receptive to different ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving. We hope you are able to join us, no matter who you are, in this wonderful community of words, wanderings and wonder.” Our hosts will be in conversation with some of the biggest and emerging names in outdoor writing. All of our live events will be in lovely venues around Kendal, and most will be put online after the event is finished. We are also delighted to host a new award for nature writing essays - The Nature Chronicles - find out more opposite. With over 25 events, journey with us as we take you from the rainforests of Great Britain to the highest peaks in the Himalaya; from a hill farm in the Lake District to travelling around the world in 80 trains; and from the bewitching Iceland Westfjords to the evocative northern landscape of Scotland. We look forward to seeing you there! Let us also take this opportunity to thank our patron, Robert Macfarlane for his unwavering support. Thanks also to our support partners Bally Peak Outlook Foundation, Gestalten, River Rock Whisky and Smartwool; and to our supporters Anti Racist Cumbria, Berghaus, inov-8, the John Muir Trust, Montane, Mountain Equipment, Timber Festival, UK Research and Innovation, the University of Cumbria and Vertebrate Publishing.

FOLLOW US!

@kendalbookfest @kendalmountainbookfest

This year’s Book Festival icon features the cover artwork by Holly Ovenden for the book Belonging by Amanda Thomson. Original illustration - top left.

A WORD FROM OUR PATRON ROBERT MACFARLANE

“The first principle of ecology is that ‘everything is connected to everything else’, or as John Muir famously put it: ‘When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.’ Yes, we are all climbers together on this Earth, joined to one another by ropes visible and invisible. The theme of this year’s Kendal Mountain Festival is solidarity; we want to celebrate and affirm the immense webwork of connections and relations that extend across and between the human and more-than-human worlds. As any mountaineer knows, solidarity is strength and solidarity is safety. Each is responsible for the other and reciprocal with the other. To successfully traverse a heavily crevassed glacier, or to top out on a big-wall climb, requires an intricate dance of taking-in and paying-out rope, of togetherness and teamwork, of duty to the group. So this year we come together -- our writers, film-makers and artists, and you our audiences -- to recognise the vital importance of unity, mutual support and generosity of spirit. Viva!”

BOOK FESTIVAL SUPPORT PARTNERS

BOOK FESTIVAL SUPPORTERS

PICK UP A

BOOK FESTIVAL PROGRAMME

For more information - look for our Book Festival Programme at our Info Desk and Box Office at the Brewery Arts.

FESTIVAL BOOKSHOP

Bookshop Tipi - outside Brewery Arts Friday & Saturday 10am- 8pm Sunday 10am - 4pm

Looking for your next read? We’ve got all your reading needs covered at our Festival bookshop. We will stock all the books from our current programme. Come in for a browse, be inspired and take away a cracking read. It’s the perfect place for buying your Christmas presents. There will be author book signings all weekend. Plus, you can purchase our Festival Buffs and vouchers for the 2023 Kendal Mountain Tour.

THE NATURE CHRONICLES PRIZE 2021/22

19.30 - 20.30 Thursday 17 November Brewery Arts - Maltroom Tickets FREE - booking required Join us as we announce and celebrate the first winners of the prestigious Nature Chronicles Prize.

This is a new biennial, international, English-language literary award. The aim is to find engaging, unique, essay-length non-fiction that responds to the time we are in and the world as it is, challenging established notions of nature writing where necessary. The winner will receive £10,000 and five runners up £1,000 each. All six winning entries will be published in an anthology by Saraband Publishers. The prize has been conceived to mark the global pandemic and serve those who have witnessed this. It is also a memorial to Prudence Scott, a lifelong nature diarist who died in 2019. Her Trust is the prize’s sponsor. For the inaugural 2022 prize and for every future award, it is hoped that the result will be a book of surprising works that vary in style but share a commitment to truth and fellow feeling. The six shortlisted writers for 2022 are : Q is for Garden – Jenny Chamarette The Fence – Laura Coleman Last Flight of the Goshawk – Ben Crane A Parable of Arable Land – Nicola Pitchford None of This Should Be Here – Joanna Pocock City of Covid Trees – Neha Sinha The evening will be hosted by Jamie Normington.

Find out more at naturechroniclesprize.com

WATCH ONLINE WITH

KENDAL MOUNTAIN PLAYER

Can’t make it to an event here in Kendal, catch up from the comfort of your home via our Kendal Mountain Player.

Many of our Book Festival events will be recorded live and uploaded within 24 hours, watch individual events from just £3.99 or get unlimited access from 17 November to 31 December for just £48. Find out more at kendalmountainplayer.com

BOARDMAN TASKER AWARD FOR MOUNTAIN LITERATURE

SHORTLISTED AUTHORS EVENT

Supported by Mountain Equipment

19.00 - 21.00 Friday 18 November Brewery Arts - Maltroom Tickets £10

Established in 1983 to commemorate the lives of Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker, the Boardman Tasker Charitable Trust celebrates their legacy by awarding the annual Award for Mountain Literature. On 17 May 1982 Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker were last seen on Mount Everest attempting to traverse The Pinnacles on the unclimbed North East Ridge at around 8250 metres. Their deaths marked the end of their contribution to a remarkable era in British mountaineering. The winner of the Boardman Tasker Award is a book that Pete and Joe would be proud of being associated with. This years judges are Natalie Berry and Matt Fry, Chair of judges is Marni Jackson. The award ceremony will contain readings from the authors and they will be in conversation with presenter and legendary mountaineer Stephen Venables.

KIERAN CUNNINGHAM

CLIMBING THE WALLS

A highly engaging, often humorous account of a dedicated climber who is forced to spend the pandemic in lockdown, in Italy, mostly NOT climbing—and the consequences for his mental health. A reminder of why mountains matter.

ANNA FLEMING TIME ON ROCK

A gorgeously written, elegant and sensual account of the intimate relationship between climber and rock, whether it’s the gritstone of the Peak District or the granite of the Cairngorms. A peripatetic meditation on how “we shape the rock and the rock shapes us”.

The Judging Panel for the 2022 Boardman Tasker Award is: BRIAN HALL

HIGH RISK

Brian Hall grew up with the radical climbers who would come to define a wild and glorious chapter of Himalayan mountaineering in the late nineteen seventies and eighties. He partied with them, climbed with them, and grieved many of the eleven unforgettable climbers portrayed in his book. High Risk takes the reader right to the heart and soul of the golden age of UK climbing.

ROBERT CHARLES LEE

THROUGH DANGEROUS DOORS

Robert Charles Lee is a professional risk scientist who likes to test his own limits, in life, love and in the mountains, climbing rock and ice. He doesn’t play safe with his writing either, offering readers his unfiltered, sometimes jaw-dropping account of what it means to take risks, and survive.

HELEN MORT

A LINE ABOVE THE SKY

One of Britain’s best young poets draws a line between the risks and terrors of motherhood and an untethered life in the mountains. Shadowing the life of Alison Hargreaves, the pioneering UK climber who did not give up alpinism when she became a mother, Helen Mort brilliantly explores the visceral education that is part of climbing mountains, and giving birth.

PAUL PRITCHARD THE MOUNTAIN PATH

The author of Deep Play has gone even deeper in this investigation into the spiritual rewards of a life in the mountains. After Paul was almost killed by a falling rock while climbing a sea stack in Tasmania, he had to push through new physical limitations to philosophical insights that changed his life. A beautifully written, devastatingly honest account of choosing to live.

MARNI JACKSON

Marni has been a faculty editor for the Banff Centre’s Mountain and Wilderness Writing program since this unique residency was created fifteen years ago. A number of books that began as early drafts in the peace and solitude of the MWW program went on to become finalists—or winners—of the Boardman Tasker award. So she is delighted to be involved this year in celebrating the literary achievements of some of the climbers, explorers, journalists and adventurers she’s encountered during her years in Banff.

NATALIE BERRY

Natalie is Editor-in-Chief of UKClimbing.com, the world’s busiest climbing and mountaineering website. She has been climbing for over 20 years, is a former GB Climbing Team member and enjoys a variety of climbing disciplines. She is also a freelance writer with work published in various outdoor and adventure publications. Natalie has also translated mountaineering and climbing books for Vertebrate Publishing. In 2016, she was the recipient of the Scottish Youth Award for Excellence in Mountain Culture.

MATT FRY

Matthew has worked in non-fiction publishing for over 20 years and is currently Director of International Sales at Quarto Books. As part of Joe Tasker’s extended family, he grew up with a somewhat inevitable passion for mountaineering literature and has fond memories of attending previous Boardman Tasker award ceremonies as a child. He has been fortunate to travel to many crags and mountains in the UK, Europe and beyond as part of his work and is delighted to be able to participate in the judging of this prestigious prize.