Everest at Any Cost

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.

Fifteen years have passed since the spectacular images of Jean-Paul Janssen's "Life at Your Fingertips" introduced the general public to free climbing and its embodiment: Patrick Edlinger. We witnessed the birth of a sporting phenomenon that would leave a lasting mark on generations of climbers. But fifteen years later, in 1997, beyond the myth, where is Patrick Edlinger? Gilles Chappaz found him on some of the most beautiful walls of the Verdon Gorge and other cliffs during the filming of Maurice Rebeix's documentary "Roc'n Wall 97," where he shares his climbing practice and philosophy with the younger generation, including Liv Sansoz and Arnaud Petit.

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.

"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.

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

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 American mountaineer Gary Hemming marked the era of the 1960s. The story of this "exceptional" character is intimately linked to that of the rescue of the two German mountaineers on the west face of the Drus, in 1966, a rescue which he had took the initiative. While the official emergency services of the EHM try to reach them from above, a pirate rope made up of Gary Hemming, René Desmaison, Lothar Mauch, Gil Bodin, Mike Brurke, François Guillot, the filmmaker Gérard Bauer organizes to join them from below and succeeded after a fierce struggle the rescue. The press seizes the event and elevates Gary Hemming to the rank of national hero. All the newspapers feature this big guy with a cool attitude, mismatched clothes, jovial smile and long blond hair on the front page. From then on, he was nicknamed: "the beatnik of the peaks".

La Cordée de Rêve traces the great alpine journey made from August 2000 to February 2001 by Patrick Berhault. His great crossing of the Alps, here told to his daughter, will be done sometimes alone, sometimes surrounded by friends: Patrick Gabarrou, Patrick Edlinger, Ottavio Fassini, Gaël Bouquet des Chaux, Valérie Aumage, Philippe Magnin. During this alpine trip he will find his brother-in-arms Patrick Edlinger for the dolimitic part and will also see the genesis of the "Cordée Magique Berhault/Magnin". For 167 days, in sneakers in the fall, on touring skis in the winter, Patrick Berhault chained 2 to 3 stages of an average hiker daily, swallowing 1,500 to 2,000 meters of vertical drop and up to 45 kilometers per day. , and climbed 22 peaks. It's called that: "La Grande Cordée" but behind this title lies an exceptional human and sporting performance.

It was a sporting feat, a national feat, but also and above all a technical feat: on October 15, 1978, three French mountaineers, for the first time, reached the summit of Everest: Pierre Mazeaud, Nicolas Jaeger, Jean Afanassieff, accompanied by Kurt Diemberger, Austrian mountaineer and cameraman. A performance broadcast live on the radio thanks to the France inter teams and filmed for television by TF1. Christian Brincourt, a great French reporter, tells us about this expedition and questions the members of the expedition on their motivations. With Pierre Mazeaud (expedition leader), Jean-François Mazeaud (doctor), Claude Deck, Raymond Despiau, Nicolas Jaeger, Walter Cecchinel, Jean Afanassieff, Kurt Diemberger.

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.

Belle and Sebastian is set high in the snowy Alps during the Second World War. The resourceful Sebastian is a lonely boy who tames and befriends a giant, wild mountain dog, Belle – even though the villagers believe her to be ‘the beast’ that has been killing their sheep.

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?

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.