Cristal Festival
At the end of last year, after returning from my trip to Taiwan and Whistler, I flew off to Crans-Montana, Switzerland. In the remote luxury ski resort of Crans-Montana, the 2012 Cristal Festival was held, the festival that gives out the biggest awards in the European advertising industry.
Although the festival focused on advertising, there was a special selection of films in a separate competition called the Young Director's Forum. Out of nine hundred submissions from directors under the age of 30, the festival short listed the top 20 films. The top 8 films, listed below, were nominated by the jury to be in competition.
ABGESTEMPELT, Michael Rittmannsberger (Austria)
FEAR OF FLYING, Conor Finnegan (Ireland)
ANACOS, Xacio Baño (Spain)
FINALE, Balazs Simonyi (Hungary)
REQUIEM FOR ROMANCE, Jonathan Ng (Canada)
EASY WAY OUT, Darcy Prendergast (Australia)
TROTTEUR, Arnaud Brisebois et Francis Leclerc (Canada)
BURN TO, Emmanuel Bernardoux (France)
A separate jury selected the winning film, Connor Finnegan's Fear of Flying. A hilariously ironic and stylish stop-motion film about a quirky bird who never quite overcame his fear of flying.
Festival Travel
The deal with the festival was if you could get yourself to Europe, they would pay for the rest of the way to Switzerland and cover the hotel. I took a direct flight from Montreal to Paris. Then flew from Paris to Geneva. I took the train from Geneva to Sierre. And finally a driver drove me from Sierre up the windy, snowy mountain roads to Crans-Montana.
Snowboarding down the Alps
I didn't have much opportunity to snowboard while I was at the Whistler Film Festival a couple weeks before. I had some regret not hitting up the legendary powder in Whistler. So, when I found out that we had free lift tickets for the Alps, provided by the Cristal Festival, I didn't want to miss another opportunity to try out the legendary powder of the Swiss Alps, even if I had to do it in jeans. I went up with two of the other filmmakers, Connor Finnegan from Ireland, and Balazs Simonyi from Hungary. Although Connor and I had snowboarded in the past, we had not been on the slopes for several years. 8 years for me and 2 years for Connor. However, Balazs had never been snowboarding ever. In the lift we were looking at the maps, and there were literally no beginner routes for him to get down. When we got to the top of the summit, we started buckling in. Balazs looked down the steep slopes of the Alps, he turned around, and took the gondala all the way back down. The powder was really amazing. I kept getting buried in the snow. My jeans were frozen solid. It took us about 45 minutes to get down the hill.
