Reel Rock Film Tour


REEL ROCK Film Tour is an annual traveling film festival, highlighting each year a new compilation of outdoor adventure films produced by Sender Films and Big UP Productions. The films are shown at a worldwide series of screening events, boasting over 500 screenings worldwide. 2019 marks the 14th year of the film tour.

About the Film Tour

The REEL ROCK Film Tour screens climbing and adventure films to audiences around the world. Each year, short films are produced for the film tour ranging in scope from rock climbing to ice climbing.
Founders Josh Lowell and Peter Mortimer, after organizing small tours for their individual film releases, collaborated to create the first REEL ROCK Film Tour in 2006. Since then, the tour has grown to over 500 screenings a year with 150,000+ attendees worldwide. REEL ROCK partners with local outdoor equipment retailers, university outing clubs, and climbing gyms to organize screening events for each year's selections. In 2011, the tour began running a series of REEL ROCK FEST events aimed at bringing the climbing and outdoors community together for a weekend of athlete clinics, climbing competitions, film screenings, community stewardship, and more.

REEL ROCK 14 Film Tour 2019

REEL ROCK 14 features three films: The High Road, United States of Joe’s, and The Nose Speed Record.In The High Road, the powerful and bold Nina Williams tests herself on some of the highest, most difficult boulder problems ever climbed. In United States of Joe’s climbers collide with a conservative coal mining community in rural Utah, to surprising results. And in The Nose Speed Record, legends Tommy Caldwell and Alex Honnold battle Yosemite dirtbags and Brad Gobright in a high stakes race for greatness.

REEL ROCK 13 Film Tour 2018

REEL ROCK 13 features four new climbing adventure films: Age of Ondra, featuring Adam Ondra, sets out to be the first person to flash the climbing grade of 5.15a; Madaleine Sorkin, in Valley of the Moon, bands together with two Israeli climbers to establish a world class big wall climb in the desert of Jordan, in hopes of attracting tourism through the means of international climbing; Sender Films Producer, Zachary Barr, sets out across the US all the way to Russia to learn more about the lesser known climbing discipline of speed climbing, in Up To Speed; and Queen Maud Land follows Alex Honnold, Jimmy Chin, Conrad Anker, Cedar Wright, Anna Pfaff, and Savannah Cummins, as they set out on a climbing expedition to the coldest place on Earth, Antarctica.
REEL ROCK 12 premieres four new short films: Break On Through, featuring Margo Hayes, the first woman to climb 5.15; Brad Gobright, in Safety Third, who's an up-and-coming free soloist with a donut addiction; the return of Chris Sharma to the deep water soloing stage in Above The Sea; and introducing the best one-handed climber in the world Maureen Beck who stars in Stumped. The Tour expanded to over 500 screenings this year.
REEL ROCK 11 features five climbing and adventure films: Young Guns, Boys in the Bugs, Brette, Rad Dad and Dodo's Delight. Featured athletes include Ashima Shiraishi, Kai Lightner, Will Stanhope, Matt Segal, Brette Harrington, Mike Libecki, Sean Villanueva O'Driscoll, Nico Favresse, Ben Ditto, Olivier Favresse and Captain Bob Shepton. This year, the tour began running a series of REEL ROCK FEST events aimed at bringing the climbing and outdoors community together for a weekend of athlete clinics, climbing competitions, film screenings, community stewardship, and more.
The 2015 REEL ROCK Film Tour consisted of five films: A Line Across the Sky, Dean Potter Tribute, High and Mighty, 24 Hours of Horseshoe Hell and Dawn Wall Exclusive. Athletes in these films include Alex Honnold, Tommy Caldwell, Jimmy Webb, Daniel Woods, Nik Berry, Mason Earle, Kevin Jorgeson, and Dean Potter.
The feature length documentary Valley Uprising was shown this year.
In the shady campgrounds of Yosemite valley, climbers carved out a counterculture lifestyle of dumpster-diving and wild parties that clashed with the conservative values of the National Park Service. And up on the walls, generation after generation has pushed the limits of climbing, vying amongst each other for supremacy on Yosemite's cliffs. Valley Uprising is the riveting, unforgettable tale of this bold rock climbing tradition in Yosemite National Park: half a century of struggle against the laws of gravity—and the laws of the land. This year the Tour increased its global spread, screening in 49 countries across the world.
REEL ROCK 8 consisted of the following films: The Sensei, featuring Daniel Woods and Yuji Hirayama in Japan and exploring the mysterious spires of Borneo, Hazel Findlay smashing standards in the UK in Spice Girl, and traveling to the towering faces of Morocco with Emily Harrington, and High Tension, a multiple award-winning documentary with Ueli Steck, Simone Moro and Melissa Arnot––a film chronicling the 2013 between European climbers and a group of sherpas.
The 2012 REEL ROCK Film Tour consisted of four films: Wideboyz, La Dura Dura, Honnold 3.0, and The Shark's Fin. The four films in this collection chronicle Alex Honnold's in Yosemite Valley, Chris Sharma and Adam Ondra's battle to establish the world's first 5.15c, and never before seen ascents of some of the most brutal routes in the world. Athletes in these films include Pete Whittaker, Tom Randall, Chris Sharma, Adam Ondra, Sasha Digulian, Daila Ojeda, Alex Honnold, Conrad Anker, Jimmy Chin and Renan Ozturk. The Tour expanded to over 400 screenings that year.
REEL ROCK Film Tour 2011 featured these short films; Origins: Obe and Ashima, Race for the Nose, "Sketchy" Andy, Ice Revolution, Project Dawn Wall, and Cold. The short films featured athletes including Tommy Caldwell, Dean Potter, "Sketchy" Andy Lewis, Ashima Shiraishi, Will Gadd, Kevin Jorgeson, Corey Richards, Obe Carrion, Sean Leary, Tim Emmett, Simone Moro, Denis Urubko, Hans Florine, The Huber Brothers. This tour featured 260 screenings worldwide with an audience of more than 65,000, $20,000 raised for nonprofits, and a screening on the Clipper Adventure marking the tour's screenings to all seven continents.
This edition's compilation of the REEL ROCK Film Tour featured short films, The Hulk, First Round First Minute, Fly Or Die, Down and Out and Under, The Hardest Moves, and the award-winning The Swiss Machine. Athletes featured in this edition include Ueli Steck, Chris Sharma, Daniel Woods, Paul Robinson, Peter Croft, Lisa Rands, Cedar Wright, Matt Segal. The 2010 Tour screened in over 200 locations worldwide, and drew over 55,000 audience members.
REEL ROCK Film Tour 2009 featured Big UP Productions' film, Progression, and Sender Films' and Nat Geo Adventure Channel's world premiere of the . Progression features climbers Chris Sharma, Kevin Jorgeson, Patxi Usobiaga, Johanna Ernst, and Tommy Caldwell as they attempt various difficult climbs.
*
Sender Films' The Sharp End was the featured film along with the shorts, Dosage: South Africa, The Aerialist, Grand Canyon Walls, and On Sight. The Sharp End features Alex Honnold, Dean Potter, Mike Patz, Steph Davis, Tommy Caldwell, Jonny Copp, and Lisa Rands.
In 2007 the tour consisted of just one longer film, King Lines, a joint Sender Films and Big UP Productions feature. The film follows Chris Sharma's travels around the world to climb various routes, or "lines". This included his first ascent of Es Pontas, a still-unrepeated climb of the Mediterranean deep-sea arch. Sender Films and Big UP Productions received a Sports Emmy for Outstanding Camera Work for a piece on Chris Sharma's first ascent of Es Pontas, in Mallorca, Spain.
Sender Films' First Ascent was the featured film along with the short Dosage Vol. 4 by Big UP Productions. First Ascent is the film that preceded the similarly titled National Geographic Series that featured in the REEL ROCK Film Tour 2009. This documentary focuses on climbers in pursuit of a first ascent. Featuring Dean Potter, Timmy O'Neill, and Sonnie Trotter; also featuring Didier Berthod on his try for the first ascent of the Cobra Crack.
*

Awards

Age of Ondra
Up To Speed
Break On Through
*
Safety Third
Stumped
Safety Third
Brette
Boys in the Bugs
Dodo's Delight
Young Guns
A Line Across the Sky
High and Mighty
Showdown at Horseshoe Hell
Valley Uprising
High Tension
The Sensei
Spice Girl
Wide Boyz
La Dura Dura
Honnold 3.0
Origins: Obe and Ashima
Cold
Sketchy Andy
Race for the Nose
Ice Revolution
The Swiss Machine
First Ascent: The Series
Alone On The Wall
The Sharp End
King Lines
First Ascent