Short film about Jasper aerialist premiering at Banff festival

Aerial athlete Sasha Galitzki will debut her short documentary 'Wild Aerial' at the 2024 Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival. (Warren Sharpe)

BANFF, Alta. -

A short documentary featuring Jasper aerial artist Sasha Galitzki will have its debut at a prestigious festival in the Canadian Rocky Mountains.

Wild Aerial will premiere at the Jenny Belzberg Theatre at the Banff Centre on Oct. 27 at 9 a.m. at the 2024 Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival.

“Our goal from the beginning was to premiere at the Banff Mountain Film Festival,” Galitzki said. “It’s a film festival that we’re excited to be a part of, and so the fact that we not only got in but we’re able to do our world premiere there means a whole lot to me and the whole crew.”

Directed by Trixie Pacis, Wild Aerial showcases Galitzki’s aerial performances in the icy landscapes of Jasper and Banff national parks. Initially meeting Galitzki through a mutual friend, Pacis later came up with the idea of doing a short documentary after seeing photos of Galitzki hanging in a massive cave at the Saskatchewan Glacier in Banff National Park.

“I am really grateful to have had so many opportunities to work with incredible photographers, but aerial is a performance art,” Galitzki said. “It’s an art of movement, and I had been thinking about how cool it could be to capture what I do on film and not just in photography, so Trixie reached out at a really opportune time when it was already on my mind.”

The film allows audiences to witness an aerial performance amid the frozen backdrop of glaciers and ice canyons in the Canadian Rockies. Due to park permitting rules, Galitzki couldn’t disclose exactly where they filmed, but she was able to elaborate how the locations were selected.

“I kind of always have an eye out for places that I can rig from,” she said. “Obviously, the rigging outdoors, especially in frozen environments in winter times, it has a lot of complexity, so I’m always on the lookout, knowing that there are few locations where we can actually rig safely.”

Because of the complex and hazardous nature of these environments, Galitzki and the crew needed to take their time to plan, work on rigging and make sure everything is safe. She also needs to strike a balance between not tiring herself out while performing and staying warm in the frigid temperatures.

She described a “ticking-clock aspect” of performing in these environments where she has a limited amount of time when she can be safely in the air. This requires her to do constant check-ins with her body, particularly her hands.

“When your hands get cold, they start to kind of claw up, and you become less dexterous, less able to use your hands,” Galitzki said. “And when I’m up there, I’m depending on my grip to stay in the air, and so once my grip starts to go, I’m no longer safe in the air.”

The film is meant to draw attention to the impacts of climate change on these vulnerable regions of the Rockies. It is also dedicated to those affected by the Jasper fire.

“In my mind, they’re very closely linked,” Galitzki said. “The change I’m seeing in the mountains is the same changes that led to the severity of the wildfire that ended up hitting town.”

Galitzki was among those who lost their homes and has since been living in Revelstoke, B.C. She noted it was now bittersweet to watch the film since most of the locations on screen have been burned down.

“I know it’s a little bit of a story of fire and ice, which feel like opposite things, but they’re coming from the same place, which is a rapidly changing mountain environment,” she said. “We’re seeing glaciers recede, and we’re seeing our summers get hotter, drier and leading to the conditions that brought the wildfire to town that took my home and those of so many in our community.”

Following its debut in Banff, Wild Aerial will be showcased at film festivals around the world, including the HoryZonty Adventure Film Festival in Slovakia.

“I think it’s a really special film,” Galitzki added. “It’s like nothing anyone has ever seen before. You’ve seen ski films, you may be seeing dance films, but this is a [film] that presents performance art and the mountain culture and the beauty of the outdoors in a really special way.”