Jean Franco

Biography of ski instructor, mountain guide, mountaineer and filmmaker-lecturer Lionel Terray. Film-portrait of an emblematic figure of French mountaineering in the 1950s and 1960s, reconstructing the life, the great races and the expeditions of the "conqueror" of the most difficult walls and summits of Europe, the Himalayas, the Andes and North America. Marcel Ichac produced in 1966, the day after the Gerbier accident, this illustrated tribute by bringing together personal archive documents, unpublished animated sequences or extracts from expedition images as well as comments taken from the autobiographical texts of Lionel Terray " The Conquerors of the Useless" and "Battle for Jannu". This film, presented at the Cannes Film Festival, has won numerous awards at specialized film festivals, including the Trente Festival and the Banff Festival.

Three years after the 1959 expedition, abandoned 350m from the summit, Lionel Terray leads a new assault on Jannu, one of the most demanding peaks in the Himalayas. At the base camp, equipment and food rations are prepared. The conditions are optimal and the ascent can begin. The camera follows the progress of the mountaineers and Sherpas as closely as possible, from one high-altitude camp to another: installing fixed ropes, progressing over crevasses, in the middle of frozen towers, vertically down immense ice falls or along the edge of sharp ridges. From 7000m, oxygen bottles become essential, as the difficulty of the climb prevents acclimatization. The expedition is a total success: the majority of its members reach the 7710m summit.

Retrospective of four major peaks climbed by French expeditions: Annapurna (8078m) in 1950; Makalu (8481m) in 1955; Mustagh Tower (7273m) in 1956 and Le Jannu (7710m) in 1962. A film by Lucien Berardini and Jean-Marie Perthus with the support of the French Alpine Club and the FFME (French Mountain and Climbing Federation).