Source Programme of Events Summer 2019 The Source Arts Centre Programme Summer 2019 | Page 7

SUMMER 2019
Solo Motion
Winner of the oscar for Best Documentary, ‘Free Solo’
is a vertigo inducing take on the world of climbing.
Writer Geoff Dyer called Alex Honnold’s solo and ropeless climb of the
3,000ft vertical wall of el Capitan in Yosemite one of the great individual
human achievements of all time. That it was also filmed for posterity in
‘Free Solo’ is perhaps one of the great film-making achievements of all time.
The documentary follows the planning by climber Honnold as he
researches and rehearses the moves he will make to scale el Capitan on
his free solo journey. Free solo climbing is a form of free climbing and
solo climbing where the climber climbs independently of all protection,
ropes or harnesses, utilising their own body to make the ascent.
Honnold started climbing at five on a climbing wall and was bitten by the
bug from that early age, climbing a few times each week throughout his
early childhood. Dropping out of university at Berkeley in California, he
chose to pursue climbing full-time, living in a van and following the
weather to sites for climbing.
Hannold says he likes to climb fast and in 2012, he took the record for the
shortest climb of regular Northwest Face of Half Dome, a Grade VI climb
(difficulty of climbs are graded, with VI being a vertical ascent). The first
ascent of the mountain took five days and Honnold completed it in just
under two. This mountain wall is 2000 feet in height and was one of two
sites in Yosemite National Park that were slow to be conquered. The
other was the 3000 feet wall of el Capitan.
Co-Director elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi is a non-climber while her partner
Jimmy Chin is an elite climber, and both they and their crew were obliged
to take some of the risks of the main protagonist. Given that the climb
could only be a once off event, they needed a significant amount of
technical preparation to be completed in advance. Sound recording was
operated at a distance without using any bulky recording equipment on
the climber’s body. Additionally food and water was stored in some of
the rock crevices so Honnold could eat as climbed.
moreover the film-makers were aware that they shouldn’t put any extra
pressure on Honnold. “We had practiced for so long, suppressing our own
emotions around it, because we had to insulate Alex from any pressure.
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