Mountaineering Documentary Movies

1902, cinematography by Frank Ormiston-Smith

A winter ascent of Piz Bernina by Swiss mountain soldiers under the command of Major Charles Golay. The film also shows images of avalanche research,...

A climbing expedition by a mountain guide and a woman to the summit of Mount Wedgwood, on a training climb in preparation for an attempt to scale...

Filmed in the Colorado Rockies, this film portrays the dangerous sport of mountain climbing and shows special equipment needed, together with its...

A pioneering mountaineering film made by Frank Ormiston-Smith for the Warwick Trading Company in 1902. Ormiston-Smith himself led and filmed an...

The ascent of the spectacular needle Guglia Rudatis (2.202 meters), in the Italian Dolomites by a group of rock climbers. A group of six men leave a...

Along New Zealand’s South Islands runs the mighty chain of the Southern Alps, where large and beautiful glaciers and Ice-falls abound among the...

This short film shows an alpine march of the young fascists of the federal command of Belluno to the Mario Vazzoler refuge. From there, a group of...

A group of men shows the 'before and after' physical effects of a journey upon the Mount Aspiring area. Mount Aspiring (9,960 ft.), known as the...

Everest-obsessed since childhood, Robert “Rusty” Baillie fulfilled his dream of joining an Everest expedition in 1982. He was buried in...

In 1941, under the Vichy regime, during the Nazi occupation, a team of six people crossed the Mont-Blanc massif. Leaving the Arve Valley with a month...

A "team of savages," as their boat captain Bob Shepton calls them, comprised of Sean Villanueva O'Driscoll, Olivier Favresse, Nicolas Favresse, and...

Documentary film material was produced during the 1938 expedition to Nanga Parbat, led by Paul Bauer. The German Himalaya Foundation had planned a...

Documentary film of the Swiss newsreel about climbing in the Kreuzbergen. The film was produced in August 1943 by the Zurich company Gloria Film AG....

Views of a party making the actual ascent of this famous mountain have a much greater interest than the usual scenic film. Commencing with the...

In 1492, Captain Antoine de Ville reached the summit of Mont Aiguille. At the time, there were no climbing shoes, no harnesses, no quickdraws!...

An official training film from the War department. In April 1942, a detail of five enlisted men and two officers, Capt. Paul Lafferty and Lt. John...

Taking footage from the film 'A la conquete des cimes', this instructional film distributed for the home market as a Pathe Baby film in two reels,...

"A 'Full-day exercise in the Bernina area' by mountain soldiers under the command of Major Charles Golay. At two o'clock, 130 men broke up in...

Rock climbing on the "Cobbler". Awarded first prize by Michael Powell in the 1948 Scottish Amateur Film Festival