Arnold Fanck

A fascinating chronology of 100 years of mountain film history in the Alps. This documentary focuses primarily on films shot on the Matterhorn, the Eiger, and the Grandes Jorasses, considered until the 1930s as the "last problems of the Alps," and shows the evolution of mountain filmmaking through numerous excerpts from documentaries and feature films – notably on the Matterhorn in 1901. The genre, appropriated as a means of mass exaltation by "fascist" regimes during the Second World War, was reinvented in the 1950s by Gaston Rebuffat, Marcel Ichac, and Lionel Terray in the Mont Blanc massif, avant-garde figures of French mountain cinema, who reintroduced, beyond performance, the values ​​of the mountains – and in color – poetry, humor, and sharing among people from all walks of life.

A documentary about skiing at the beginning of the century.

A record of the ascent and descent of Monte Rosa on skis by Arnold Fanck, Hans Rhode and Sepp Allgeier. The party starts from Zermatt through the Rhone Valley. They climb roped from the Betemps Cabane and reach the summit of Monte Rosa, then, they start the descent on skis to return to the refuge. The film is one of the first ski mountaineering films and the first collaboration between Allgeiger and Fanck, two of the fathers of the Bergfilm, the German mountain film genre.