El Capitan (film)

El Capitan is a film by filmmaker Fred Padula that captures one of the earliest ascents of The Nose on El Capitan in Yosemite Valley, California.It has won several awards at film festivals around the world.

The climbers use accepted climbing practices and stateoftheart techniques appropriate to their climbing era. For example, they wear tubular nylon webbing swami belts around their bodies and tie the rope into them rather than harnesses clipped to the rope with carabiners. Also, though they use familiar hex nuts they can also been seen hammering pitons into cracks for protection.Filming in 16mm format started on the wallMay 1968 and lasted through June, with additional scenes shot in the Fall and Spring 1969. The project was initially funded with the help of The North Face founder Doug Tompkins, who brought in his friend Peter J. Avenali, as well as by climber Glen Denny and the filmmaker. Subsequent funding came from the American Film Institute. The completed film eventually premiered at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1978. An early version of a digital remaster of the film was shown at the Banff Mountain Film Festival in 2007 In early 2013, the filmmaker finished a Kickstarterfunded digital restoration and reissue on Bluray and DVD. The DVD and Bluray are being distributed by Western Eye Press a company owned by Lito TejadaFlores, one of the climbers featured in the film. ........

Source: Wikipedia