Keith to revisit filmaking heights
An award-winning cinematographer will be in Stirling next month to provide a first-hand account of shooting the acclaimed mountain film Touching the Void.
Dunblane-based Keith Partridge was involved in filming the 2003 movie, which is based on the true story of two mountaineers’ struggle for survival while on the previously unclimbed western face of 20,813ft Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes.
The 52-year-old’s credits also include director of photography (mountain unit) on blockbuster Alien Versus Predator.
It featured an action ice-climbing sequence on a 500ft icefall on the Argentiere Glacier in the French Alps and the ascent of the highest peak in the Arctic, the 12,120ft Mt Gunnbjorn in Greenland, for a documentary involving ex England footballer Ian Wright.
The special screening of Touching the Void at the Albert Halls on Thursday, October 11, is a fundraiser to help Stirling Scouts, who include Keith’s 14-year-old son Jamie, finance their trip to the World Scout Jamboree in United States next summer.
Touching the Void was filmed in the Alps and on Siula Grande itself where the crew experienced extreme conditions while filming including blizzards and winds of up to 60mph.
Fifty-two-year-old Keith, who moved to the Perthshire town from Fife two years ago with wife Andrea, Jamie and daughter Erin (11) said this week that Touching the Void remains the defining film in his career.
He explained: “Shooting it was hard - the situations in the mountains were often unstable, the conditions desperate, with substantial risk especially on the mountain in Peru where as the specialist it was up to myself to film those scenes that simply could not be recreated later in the Alps.
“The Peru trip was over a month long and was pretty arduous. We had a long walk-in to establish a base camp before moving up to a high and very basic camp on the edge of the glacier beneath Siula Grande. We climbed and filmed from there in some very precarious situations and altitudes that made everything that much tougher.”
Keith jointed the BBC as a trainee aged 18 and began heading into the mountains as a hobby at the same time. Since then he has been involved in numerous mountain and adventure-based films including a successful ascent of Everest in 2012.
Other film and TV credits include ‘Mountains – Andes’ for the BBC Nautral History Unit; Discovery Channel project ‘Energy – Chernobyl – The Truth’ on a journey into the reactor hall of the stricken nuclear power plant, and following climber Reinhold Messner on a trekking odyssey across the Himalaya ‘Messner’s Himalaya.’
Keith’s feature-length documentary about one of the world’s best known mountaineers, Chris Bonnington, won ‘Best Mountaineering Film’ at the Bilbao International Film Festival.
The Albert Halls presentation next month, Keith said, will be a different kind of fundraising event. He added: “It’s an epic film followed by what I hope will prove to be an enlightening presentation on just what it took to get a camera to where I managed to get one!
“The behind the scenes stories will, I hope, leave the audience almost as breathless as the film – arguably one of the greatest survival stories of all time.”
Tickets are available from the Albert Halls Box Office £12.50, concession £10.