Bernadette McDonald
was the founding Vice President of Mountain Culture at The Banff Centre and director of the Banff Mountain Festivals for 20 years. During this time she grew the Banff Festival from a regional event to a world class festival, including a tour that reaches tens of thousands of people on all seven continents. Bernadette has been on film juries at festivals around the world. She is the author of eight books on mountaineering and mountain culture, including Freedom Climbers (Rocky Mountain Books, 2011), Tomaž Humar (Random House UK, 2008), Brotherhood of the Rope: the Biography of Charles Houston (The Mountaineers Books, 2007), and I’ll Call You in Kathmandu: the Elizabeth Hawley Story (The Mountaineers Books, 2005). McDonald has won numerous awards, including both the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature and the Banff Mountain Book Festival Grand Prize for Freedom Climbers in 2011. She has also won Italy’s ITAS Prize for mountain writing (2010) and is a two-time winner of India’s Kekoo Naoroji Award for Mountain Literature (2009 and 2008). She has also received the Alberta Order of Excellence (2010), the Summit of Excellence Award from The Banff Centre (2007), the King Albert Award for international leadership in the field of mountain culture and environment (2006), and the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal (2002).
Bernadette has degrees in English Literature and Music, with specialization in performance and analytical theory. She spent two years in the music program at The Banff Centre performing contemporary music with her ensemble, Fusion 5. Bernadette has taught music privately and at the college level and has performed in several countries in Europe as well as in North America.
Bernadette lectures and consults for universities, museums, festivals and cultural institutions around the world. She currently serves on the international advisory committee for National Geographic’s Expedition Council.
Bernadette spends most of her discretionary time in the mountains: climbing, ski touring and hiking.
Bill Westwell
is a Vancouver native with a lifelong love of both the mountains and film. Since being introduced to rock climbing in Boy Scouts so many moons ago, he has found himself addicted to the steep and the rocky, and the media surrounding it. Rock climbing, skiing, mountain biking, hiking and photography have been serious passions set against the backdrop by this area's incredible beauty. For the past 10 years he has been working as a sound designer and audio engineer in post production audio for film. Bill also loves teaching indoor rock climbing and route setting at the Edge Climbing Centre in North Van. This unique combination puts a massive smile on Bill's face each day, and ensures that he brings a great deal of excitement to being a juror for the VIMFF.
David Kaszlikowski
is a world published free-lance photographer, specializing adventure and outdoor photography. His pictures have been printed as front cover shots for major climbing/travel magazines all over the world. He works as a contributing editor for 'National Geographic' (Polish issue) and climbing magazine 'Gory'. He has also been published in Vertical, Alpinist, Rock and Ice, Climbing and Desnivel climbing magazines. For over a decade, he has been a pioneer of professional climbing photography in Poland, climber and explorer.
Eliza Kubarska
adventure filmmaker and producer, is a graduate of Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (Poland) sculpture and Visual Art and A.Wajda Master School of Film Directing. She has participated and filmed exploratory expeditions to Greenland, Pakistan’s legendary Trango Towers , Borneo and Mali. Her documentary "What happened on Pam Island" (2010) won awards and special mentions at documentary and mountain film festivals around the world. Currently she is working on a documentary, "Baltoro Passage", a story about children of alpinists who died on K2. Eliza is the head of Vertical Vision Film Studio- an adventure movie production company.
