Vertical Sailing Greenland
2011 · 58 min · Big Wall, Trad, Alpine, Documentary · Xpedition Films
Directed by Sean Villanueva O'Driscoll and produced by the Club Alpin Belge in 2011, this is the film that introduced most people to the sailing-and-climbing formula the Belgians would keep returning to. Sean Villanueva O'Driscoll, Nicolas Favresse, Olivier Favresse and Ben Ditto board veteran captain Bob Shepton's boat and work their way up the Greenland coast, from Upernavik to Cape Farewell, dodging icebergs on the way to the wall they call the Impossible Wall.
It is expedition filmmaking of the honest kind: cold rock, a cramped boat, instruments coming out whenever the weather makes climbing pointless. Ditto is the photographer's eye inside a crew that treats a granite fjord as both a climbing objective and a place to live for a season. Watch it for the logistics and the company as much as for the climbing.
Review
The film that introduced the Belgian formula, and still the best entry point to it. Sean Villanueva O'Driscoll, Nicolas and Olivier Favresse and Ben Ditto board Bob Shepton's ten-meter boat and sail the Greenland coast from Upernavik to Cape Farewell, dodging icebergs on the way to a wall they call the Impossible Wall.
This is for anyone who likes expedition filmmaking of the honest kind. Cold rock, a cramped boat, a captain in his seventies, and instruments coming out every time the weather makes climbing pointless. It is also a good first film for a non-climber, because the situation explains itself. Skip it if you want clean send footage. The climbing is real but the film treats it as one part of a season, not the point.
What works is the company. Ditto's eye as a photographer shapes how the fjord looks, and the crew treats a granite coast as both an objective and a place to live. What it leaves out is route detail. You will finish the film without a clear picture of what was climbed, at what grade, or how hard it was.
The Adventures of the Dodo is the sequel, with the same crew, worse weather and polar bears. It is bigger and stranger. This one is the origin, and the version I recommend first, because it shows the formula before anyone knew it was a formula.
