Everest 78, or the French on top of the world

Charles le Temeraire asks in marriage Jeanne de Beauvais, daughter of King Louis XI, wishing to get her valuable lands in dowry. The King is wise to this, and since his daughter does not feel inclined to accept, he refuses. Charles sets up a plan to abduct the prince, in a way that the suspicions will fall upon Robert de Neuville, a noble enamoured of the princess. Robert manages to free her from the castle where she was being kept. Charles keeps setting traps, and managing people to perjure against Jeanne, and the King himself. Finally, Jeanne escapes alive from a pack of wolves, who set watching the lady alone in the snow covered woods, instead of attacking her. Charles does yet accuse her of being a witch - wishing to have her dead rather than being the wife of Robert... Robert will be her champion in a Judgement of God. Will the 'miracle of the wolfs' repeat itself, or fearless Charles defeat Robert in the sword duel?

Les Parois de la Mémoire – Le Pilier Central du Frêney is a 25-minute documentary film directed by Jérôme Equer in 1994 and broadcast on the FR3 weekly program Montagne. The film highlights the tragic story of the July 1961 attempt to climb the Frêney Central Pillar (on the Italian side of Mont Blanc), during which a Franco-Italian team—led notably by Pierre Mazeaud and Walter Bonatti—was trapped by a violent, multi-day storm of exceptional intensity, resulting in a tragic retreat and the deaths of four of the seven climbers. It draws on archival footage, excerpts from Lothar Brandler’s film Inferno am Montblanc, and firsthand accounts from the participants, including mountaineer and politician Pierre Mazeaud.

From Trento to Chamonix, via Zermatt; from the Morgiou cove to the Eiger's north face; from Planica to the Lavaredo peaks, the Alps are depicted, illustrated, and magnified in all their unique and sublime beauty, through the sports practiced there and the most typical customs and traditions of their inhabitants. A helicopter rescue and a parachute jump from the Red Wall by Wolfgang Weizenbocks are experiences not to be missed.

In 1975, Raymond Renaud, Yves Pollet-Villard, Maurice Gicquel, Maurice Cretton, Jean Coudray, Yvon Masino, Walter Cecchinel, all teacher guides at ENSA in Chamonix, with the help of the Indian Mountaineering Foundation, set out to cross the 2 peaks of the highest mountain in India. After 43 hours in a truck, 10 days of slow and difficult approach walking, helped by goats for the portage due to lack of sherpas, the base camp is set up on the Nanda Devi glacier. Two groups share the two eastern and western slopes, 3 kilometers separate them: the goal being to meet between the two summits by the ridge. But on the big day, with the monsoon, bad weather arrives with wind and snow, we will have to give up. Like the French expedition of 1951 which lost two mountaineers, Roger Duplat and Gilbert Vigne, to whom Paul Gendre and Louis Dubosc pay tribute.

An international expedition led by French mountaineer Benoit Chamoux reached the summit of Annapurna (8091 m) on Tuesday, May 10, 1988, via its south face, one of the most difficult routes in the Himalayas. The expedition, named "L'Esprit d'Equipe" (The Spirit of Team), financed by the computer company Bull (Chamoux thus secured one of the largest contracts in the history of mountaineering: twenty million francs to carry out his project), aimed to reach six peaks over 8,000 meters, as a full team, within three years: Annapurna, Everest, Manaslu, Cho Oyu, Makalu, and Kangchenjunga. The challenge results: in 1988: Annapurna (8091 m) - 5 out of 6 men reached the summit, 1988: failed on Everest, 200 m below the summit, 1989: Manaslu (8183 m) - 8 out of 8 men reached the summit in 4 teams of 2, 1990: Cho Oyu (8201 m) - 7 out of 7 men reached the summit, 1990: Shisha Pangma (8013 m) - 7 out of 7 men reached the summit.

Veteran Chamonix mountain guide Michel Servoz and the young aspiring guide Patrick Falavier attempt to climb the west face of the Dru in the Mont-Blanc massif. When they are gone for five days, the captain of the gendarmerie in Morteau is worried, but he cannot undertake research for a rescue without the permission of the family.

"In 1983, a French expedition, led by Yannick Seigneur and including Jean Afanassieff, left for Tibet to climb the western ridge of Everest on the Chinese side in alpine style. Jean Afanassieff films the Tibetan population between tradition, religion and modernity and tells us about this expedition."

In February 1966, Pierre Mazeaud and Lucien Berardini traveled to the Atakor massif, in the Hoggar mountain range of the Sahara in southern Algeria. There, they attempted a challenging first ascent: the Takouba spur, one of the peaks adjacent to Garet El Djenoun, a legendary mountain in the Hoggar massif, first climbed by Roger Frison-Roche and Raymond Coche in 1935. The documentary, superbly filmed by Jacques Ertaud, won the Grand Prize at the Trento International Mountain Film Festival in 1966.

A fascinating chronology of 100 years of mountain film history in the Alps. This documentary focuses primarily on films shot on the Matterhorn, the Eiger, and the Grandes Jorasses, considered until the 1930s as the "last problems of the Alps," and shows the evolution of mountain filmmaking through numerous excerpts from documentaries and feature films – notably on the Matterhorn in 1901. The genre, appropriated as a means of mass exaltation by "fascist" regimes during the Second World War, was reinvented in the 1950s by Gaston Rebuffat, Marcel Ichac, and Lionel Terray in the Mont Blanc massif, avant-garde figures of French mountain cinema, who reintroduced, beyond performance, the values ​​of the mountains – and in color – poetry, humor, and sharing among people from all walks of life.

In 1961 the southern face of the Central Pillar of Mont Blanc was still unclimbed. Two roped parties of climbers decided to come together to attempt to open a new route. Four days of violent storms caught the climbers just 80 metres from the summit. Of the seven climbers, only three returned home. One of the most intense and dramatic events in the history of climbing relives on the big screen, thanks to accounts and images of the feat.

On July 11, 1961, a rope team of seven men—led by the Italian Walter Bonatti and the Frenchman Pierre Mazeaud—set out to scale the Frêney Pillar on the south face of Mont Blanc. After days of grueling effort—and just as they were nearing their goal—they were trapped by a violent storm. Stranded at an altitude of over 4,500 meters in temperatures of minus 20 degrees, the seven climbers were forced to bivouac in hellish conditions. Exhausted, spent, and with one of their number injured, they displayed extraordinary solidarity, exemplary courage, and a determination that commands respect right to the very end. Yet the mountain proved cruel. Lost in fog, blinded by the darkness, and gripped by the cold, four of the seven climbers perished from exhaustion after a perilous five-day, five-night ordeal in hell. Only three made it down alive, including the Italian Walter Bonatti and the Frenchman Pierre Mazeaud.

Doug Scott and Roger Baxter-Jones climb Broad Peak.

To understand the difficulties of an ascent to over eight thousand metres, it is enough to remember the almost 300 victims these peaks have claimed. The Swiss alpinist Ehrart Loretan, the third alpinist in the world to have climbed all 14 8,000, and the Austrian alpinist Kurt Diemgerger cover the whole history of the conquest of the world’s 8,000, from the fifties to the present day, together with other alpinists and film directors who have climbed them. They talk about their experienced when they ventured into the death zone.

In this documentary first broadcast in 1993, Chris Bonington looks back at the first ever expeditions to conquer Mount Everest and the effect that the achievement of climbing the mountain had on climbing as a whole worldwide.

Re-enactment of the attempt made in July 1961 by a french-italian group in order to climb Freney Pillar, in Mont Blanc massif. The expedition was composed by the frenchmen Pierre Mazaud, Robert Guillaume, Pierre Kohlmann and Antoine Vieille and by the italians Walter Bonatti, Andrea Oggioni e Roberto Gallieni. The groups arrived separatly to the camp of Col de la Fourche, but with the same aim. They united by chance to conquest the famous peak. The attempt is crushed by bad wheather and, during the descent, three French and an Italian will die.

In 1983, three climbers became the first French people to reach the summit of Everest. Among them were expedition leader Pierre Mazeaud and a promising 25-year-old climber, Jean Afanassieff. Twenty years later, the two legends, accompanied by mountain guide Michel Pellé, retrace the steps of their exploit and make the trek from Kathmandu to the foot of the roof of the world. This is an opportunity to retrace the history of the successive assaults on Everest and to assess the current situation of a mountain that has become a victim of its own success: while Sherpas have been able to take advantage of Western enthusiasm and thus enrich themselves and equip the summit to make it more accessible, the site's attendance poses numerous problems, both human and ecological.

Guido Magnone's incredible adventure begins strangely on the banks of the Ourcq canal among a group of kids who dream of swimming. Guido, the solitary son of "rital", dives to get noticed, succeeds, takes a liking to it, breaks his first record, collects medals. At the same time, he draws, attends the Beaux-Arts, is accepted with open arms and befriends the sculptors César and Féraud. At the end of the war, during a health stay in Chamonix, it is love at first sight for the mountains, climbing. Guido's ascent is now dizzying. He stormed the west face of the Drus, then the Fitzroy and the Tour de Mustagh, summits reputed to be impossible. He rubs shoulders with the greatest, Lionel Terray, Maurice Herzog, and participates in the Makalu expedition, camera in hand, or those of Jannu and Chacraraju. Later, in his fifties, Guido hangs up the carabiners and participates in the foundation of the UCPA

Mountaineering documentary on the Nanga Parbat expedition, in India, in 1982. Led by mountaineer Pierre Mazeaud, this international expedition brings together eight French people, two Germans, an Iraqi, an Austrian and an Englishman including Michel Afanassieff, Michel Berrueux, Walter Cecchinel, Kurt Diemberger, Hans Engl, Shah Jehan, Karim Imamdad and others. On July 14, 1982, Hans Engl reached the summit after twelve hours of struggle.

Pierre Mazeau has managed to unite three of his passions which seem to have nothing in common, at a very high level: mountaineering, jurisprudence and policy. The Everest mountaineer, rescued from the Freney Pillar, the passionate jurist, the former sports minister, privy counsellor, and president of the French Constitutional Court is a charismatic personality. This sensitive film portrait follows a line, which Pierre Mazeaud himself has quoted: “Alpinism belongs to those who provide themselves with means to reach their goals, to those who are fully committed to a goal, to those, who know the value of solidarity of men, and to those who are aware that true human existence can only be fulfilled by proceeding with a team of roped-partners.”

The two brothers Jean and Pierre Ravier have opened almost all the "classic" (difficult) routes in climbing and mountaineering in the Pyrenees. Roped together at the waist using a few flat knots and little equipment, the two twin brothers achieved more than 200 firsts across the entire massif. A unique style and commitment, a state of mind made up of adventure, literature, inventiveness and friendship. Unclassifiable and outgoing, after 60 years of Pyrenees, their desire for the mountains is intact. When does a race start? How does the idea, the desire, come about? What sense does it make to only achieve firsts? And what is the role of the Pyrenees themselves in this reciprocal and endless game of attraction?

In 1973, 6 guides from the National Ski and Mountaineering School (ENSA), including Charles Daubas and Walter Cecchinel, left by truck from Chamonix to Tamanrasset in the desert in Algeria with the aim of climbing some peaks of the Atakor massif including Adaouda and Tizouyag where they do the first of "La Voie de l'ENSA".

Nicolas Jaeger, a French physician specializing in sports and high-altitude physiology, conducted an experiment by spending two months on the highest peak in the Peruvian Andes, Huascarán. From July to September 1979, Nicolas Jaeger lived alone for 60 days at an altitude of 6,700 meters and studied the effects of hypoxia on his body. He documented his experience on film and later in his book, "Carnet De Solitude," published in 1979.