Valley Uprising

There are huge granite walls in Yosemite and for fifty years the people who climbed them lived in the valley's campground. The documentary tells three generations. In the fifties and sixties there is a rivalry between Royal Robbins and Warren Harding; one argues for clean climbing, the other wants the summit at any cost. In the seventies come drugs and free climbing. In the eighties John Bachar climbs without a rope. The next generation goes after speed records. The park authorities try to clear all these people out of the campground. Peter Mortimer directs with Nick Rosen. Peter Sarsgaard narrates. It is an American production. The documentary works with a wide archive; amateur footage and photographs spanning fifty years are used. The matter it treats is a subculture setting its own rules; climbing here is not a sport but a way of living. The narrative does not idealise the climbers; theft, drugs and deaths are inside it too. An aircraft crash makes its strangest section; the climbers carried out the cargo of a plane that came down in the valley. The documentary takes on the conflict between the park authorities and the climbers as well. The shots of the walls build a sense of scale inside the narrative. Its limit is structure; the narrative is chronological and conventional, and some generations are passed over quickly. Who it is for: viewers who like climbing documentary and narratives of subculture. Who it is not for: the subject is narrow, it is long, and the ending conventional.