The Backcountry Film Festival is a pre-winter tradition in Melbourne, with screenings usually happening in autumn. Other towns and cities in Australia sometimes also host the festival. Sadly, in 2020 the festival couldn’t go ahead as a screening because of COVID-9 lockdown.

We want to test whether to host a virtual festival before Christmas, or wait until next year in the hope we can hold a ‘real’ (face to face) screening.

The 16th Annual Backcountry Film Festival will be screening documentaries and ski movies about athletic pursuit in the mountains, artistic vision, friendship, and how the snowsports community is adapting to a changing environment.

There are 10 films in the 2021 season (you can check them out here) covering everything from slacklining in the mountains of Norway, climbing and skiing in Svalbard, doing the “Vallée Blanche” ski route in Chamonix to gorgeous clips from the Revelstoke backcountry.

Normally we host the festival in March or April. In 2020, we had to cancel the screening. Because of the pandemic, we are not certain how big a screening could be in early 2021, so we want to test opinions on whether we should host a virtual screening for Melbourne?

Filling out the poll below would really help with our planning.

The festival costs $200 to host so we would need to charge a small fee for people to watch the screening via the virtual festival (probably $8).