From award-winning documentary filmmaker E. Chai Vasarhelyi (“MERU”) and world-renowned photographer and mountaineer Jimmy Chin comes National Geographic Documentary Film’s FREE SOLO, a stunning, intimate and unflinching portrait of the free soloist climber Alex Honnold, as he prepares to achieve his lifelong dream: climbing the face of the world’s most famous rock … the 3,000ft El Capitan in Yosemite National Park … without a rope. FREE SOLO
Here is our interview with Filmmakers Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin.
Free Solo has already become a record breaking film as it's set the highest per screen opening weekend for a documentary ever. Up next is hopefully an award-winning holiday season that last until the 2018 Oscars. In other words, DEAR ACADEMY here is one of your 5 nominees for the 2018 Best Documentary.
I want to share a quote from Jimmy Chin, from the film's press notes, had about Alex Honnold long before Alex scaled El Capitan.
Normally when you’re climbing and you get scared or tired, your technique starts to suffer. Your breathing increases, your heart starts to pound. Essentially, your capacity to climb falls apart. If you’re climbing with a rope, you have the option of letting it fall apart and the rope will catch you. When you’re free soloing, obviously that’s not an option. You have to have a different level of mastery over your physical and mental capacity. You have to be able to completely control fear, which is a very difficult thing to manage. And what Alex did that’s extraordinary is he climbed really big walls. It required a great mastery on a very high level. When people found out that he did it … Well, it’s not like anybody has to brag about free soloing Half Dome. It tells you everything you need to know about that person’s ability as a climber. At the time free soloing Half Dome wasn’t even something that climbers were talking or thinking about. It wasn’t even in the consciousness. So when he did it, it was like, “Wow. OK. The bar just got moved.”
So imagine the significance of what Alex has accomplished by scaling El Capitan!
Here is my chat with Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin.
For more information about FREE SOLO.
