Saturday morning
9.30am, Saturday 6 December 2025 at Abertay University
Footsteps
Film 2024, UK, 33 minutes, Director Jimmy Hyland
Four Female Scottish Mountaineers follow in the footsteps, nearly 70 years after three Scottish friends pioneered the first ever all female expedition and ascent of the Jugal Mountains in the Nepalese Himalaya. Only five expeditions have explored the region since and it remains remote and ready for exploration. This film follows the four Scottish Mountaineers as they seek new skiing and climbing routes above the Jugal Glacier and explore what success in the mountains looks like – environmentally, morally, culturally and personally. Pauline Sanderson, a previous speaker at the DMFF is one of the group of four.
Lost Art of the Land
Film 2024, Scotland, 9 minutes, Director Phoebe Sleath
Phoebe Sleath is a geology PhD student and artist based in Aberdeen. In July 2024, she joined an Artist’s Residency with Sail Britain, travelling on a sailing boat to the Small Isles and Isle of Skye. With a watercolour sketchbook in hand, she followed in the footsteps of early geologists to document the rocks and landscape, while climbing, walking, and sailing around the islands. This short film explores how we connect with land, showing that science, art and adventure are not separate ways of knowing, but part of the same deep conversation with the Earth that connects us all. She is the DMFF artist in residence 2025.
Lorraine’s ‘Ups ’n’ Doons’ (Kevin Woods film)
Film 2024, Scotland, 30 minutes, Director Kevin Woods
Mountaineer Lorraine McCall battles through bracken, bogs, and cancer recovery, making an epic circumnavigation of Scotland’s 231 Grahams during the wettest summer on record.
Interval of 30 minutes
A Dogged Full House
Shona Marshall
Shona Marshall is one of a select band who have completed a “full house” – 282 Munros, 227 Munro tops, 222 Corbetts, 231 Grahams, 140 Donalds, 34 Furths and mountains of Munro height in the rest of the UK and Ireland. Accompanying her all the way has been a 9-year-old terrier called Betty, a canine companion like no other. A truly top dog! In just four years, owner and dog have hiked a total of 415 hill days, covering a distance of some 5,600 miles and ascending 1,755,000ft, which is equivalent to more than 60 times the height of Everest. It was, funnily enough, a trek to Everest base camp where Shona caught the walking bug and decided to own a dog. The rest, as they say, is history. Shona will be delivering the Irvine Butterfield Memorial lecture.