“Savage Cinema” is back for its third year at the Festival and will launch on Friday 18th with the screening of Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans at Teatro Victoria Eugenia. The film is to be introduced by its director, John McKenna, who premiered the documentary at Cannes.

Rafa Ortiz, kayaking pro and star of Chasing Niagara, will be in San Sebastián with director Rush Sturges to present the adventure that took him through Mexico, the United States and Canada. As well as Xavier De Le Rue, the big mountain snowboarder and protagonist of Degrees North, who will be joined by Guido Perrini, the film’s director. Jon Herranz, Robert van Wingerden and Victor Van Vloten complete the list of directors in attendance.

Michael Oblowitz will then draw the section to a close on Friday 25th, as he brings Heavy Water to Kursaal 2, the perfect setting for these two large and enigmatic characters of the surf scene.

“Savage Cinema” and Bilbao Mendi Film Festival are pleased to announce the continuance for another year of their collaboration launched in 2013, which aims to bring to the Festival the best of the year’s mountain films.

The full program will be available from 12th September
Tickets will be on sale from 13th September at www.sansebastianfestival.com

Guido Perrini, director of Degrees North
Guido Perrini is one of the leading cameramen of action sports today. He has worked with some of the best mountain athletes and companies in the world. In recent years he has worked on projects such as Into the Mind and the remake of Point Break. He is now part of the adventure sports audiovisual production company, Timeline Missions.

John McKenna, director of Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans
John McKenna, together with Gabriel Clarke, co-directed the Grierson-nominated documentary Clough in 2009, the motor racing documentary When Playboys Ruled the World (2011) and The Fight of Their Lives (2011), nominated for the BAFTA Awards. McKenna has shot and produced numerous TV documentaries in the UK and spent 13 years with the ITV Sport network.

Jon Herranz, director of Panaroma
He has directed numerous short films and web-series on mountain climbing and outdoor sports in collaboration with the extreme sports channel EpicTv. He wrote the mountain climbing documentaries Panorama (2015), Novato (2014), and Restart (2014). And sociopolitical documentaries such as Sikyong. La revolución política del XIV Dalai Lama (2014) or Flames (2013). Together with Gerard Peris he founded the production company Namuss Films.

Michael Oblowitz, director of Heavy Water
He was involved in New York’s No Wave subculture in the 1970s and 80s. His first works, are screened today in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He has helmed action and horror movies. He is the author, among other titles, of On the Borderline (2001), The Foreigner (2003) and Out for a Kill (2003), both starring Steven Seagal, and The Traveler (2010), with Val Kilmer. In 2010 he directed an iconic surf documentary, Sea of Darkness, screened among others at San Sebastian’s Surfilmfestibal.

Rafa Ortiz, kayak star of Chasing Niagara
Ortiz learned to paddle in Veracruz but honed his skills in Canada and in 2005 became the first Mexican ever to compete at the World Freestyle Championships. The Mexican has garnered a massive legion of fans with his agressive all-out approach and he can regularly be seen hurling his boat off 100-foot waterfalls and down the gnarliest of whitewater runs.

Rush Sturges, kayaker and director of Chasing Niagara
Rush Sturges, known as one of the world’s most innovative kayakers, has travelled and kayaked in more than 30 countries. Since turning professional at 16, Sturges has maintained current presence in competitive and extreme paddling while producing films about the sport. He produces, stars in and records the music for all of his films.

Xavier De Le Rue, freerider, snowboarder starring Degrees North
In terms of technique and style, Xavier's snowboarding is majestic. He has taken home the title of Freeride World Tour Champion 3 times and continues to inspire, beaming his love for nature's coldest terrain, through his multi awarded films and innovation in filming techniques, as the autonomous flying camera that follows him while riding.

Victor van Vloten and Robert van Wingerden, directors of Paul
Victor van Vloten worked on independent projects with the filmmaker Rudolf Borgart. Since then and he has directed and written around a dozen short films and documentaries. In 2009, he created the advertising agency, Arteffects, with Robert van Wingerden, a freelance cameraman and author of the travel blog What About Her.

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