Hard Grit

Hard Grit (1998)

Laying bare the realities of life at the sharp end

Regarded as an important and iconic film in its genre, this award-wining landmark British climbing documentary showcases historic ascents on the dangerous gritstone edges of the Pennines. Exploding the myths that shroud extreme gritstone climbing, the film includes some of the most terrifying climbing scenes ever captured. The Peak District’s star names are climbing at the top of their powers – surely something has got to give.

Date of release
1998-10-06
TMDB
7.5 / 10 (17)
Runtime
53m
Genres
Documentary
Director
Richard Heap

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: Peak District

Hard Grit is a 1998 British rock climbing film directed by Richard Heap and produced by Slackjaw Film, featuring traditional climbing, free soloing, and bouldering on gritstone routes in the Peak District in Northern England. It is considered an important film in the genre and regarded as a historic and iconic film. The film starts with a dramatic fall by French climber Jean–Minh Trinh-Thieu on Gaia at Black Rocks. Hard Grit won ten international film festival awards.

Production

By 1997, Richard Heap had been climbing full-time and living off the British social welfare system (the "dole") for a number of years. He was part of what he termed the "Sheffield scene" of leading British gritstone climbers and was renting a room in Seb Grieve's house.

In 2006, SlackJaw re-released the film as Hard Grit & Hard Plastic, which included extra material that increased the film's run time to 80 minutes, and had footage from the men's final in the Foundry International Bouldering Open of 1997 featuring Chris Sharma.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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