Bertrand Delapierre is a French mountaineer, producer and documentary filmmaker. His main field of interest and creativity is extreme skiing, mountaineering, mountain occupations, climate change and climate challenges, stories about people in the field. Delapierre gained popularity as the climbing partner of extreme snowboarder Marco Siffredi, whom he accompanied to the Alps and the Himalayas. He later directed the documentary "Marco, L'Étoile Filante" about Sifredi's life and death in the Himalayas. After his death, Delapierre's activity focused on skiing, especially through the film "La Nuit de la Glisse", shot on tape.
In 2003, he created the ice climbing film "Ice Up" with Francois Damiliano, Guy Lassell and five other climbers. Delapierre directed many documentaries about free climbing, including "Ali Baba & Serial Climbers", with Mathieu Bouyoud and Daniel Du Lac, "La Voie Du Milieu" again with Mathieu Bouyoud and Daniel Du Lac for Petzl.
In his portfolio, we also find a film project for Arnaud Petit, who climbs Black Bean 8b on his own. In 2006 "Les Amants Des Drus" a film showing the history of the ascents on the west face of the Drus. In 2016, he immersed himself in the history of the mythical peak with "L'Aiguille Verte"... In 2019, he directed the documentary "Eric Escoffier - La Fureur De Vivre".
"My cinematographic practice encompasses a variety of outdoor activities: climbing, mountaineering, free-flying, cycling... I try to follow the athletes as close to the action as possible and try to capture their motivation, their dynamics. I have to shoot on very serious walls, often with objects at a high technical level. The photographer or cameraman has to move fast enough so that the camera is almost invisible to the person being photographed.
I had the chance to work with some big stars of mountaineering, Profit, Destivel, Lynn Hill, Arno Petit and in more recent times with Dodet, Steck or Chris Sharma, Chris Bonington. Film projects with them often take me to new places, the great north faces of the Alps and far-flung expeditions. I regularly get on exploration boats, where there are always adventures: ¾ of the planet is covered in water, so that increases the range of cinematic possibilities!"
At the 17th "Days of Challenges" we saw his award-winning film about the crew and the ship Endurance trapped on the Antarctic ice "The Pursuit of Endurance on the Shoulders of Shackleton"
The year 2024 is particularly busy for him, with film episodes that have entered the presentation of the Olympic Games in Paris, the film about the eternal and obsessive for every mountaineer and mountain lover Mont Blanc, the 50-year history of skiing the iconic Needle La Vert, pictures of extreme skiing in Chile, and so on and so forth, which we will learn about on the stage of "Days" on December 5.