Drouin South filmmaker Tim Cope has received two major awards at the Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival for his film On the Trail of Genghis Khan.
Mr Cope’s film took out the top award at the festival, the Grand Prize, and also won top honours in the category of Best Film on Mountain Culture.
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The film was chosen for the Grand Prize from a field of around 70 films.
On the Trail of Genghis Khan documented Mr Cope’s three year journey from Mongolia to Hungary by Horse, retracing the path of Genghis Khan and his descendents hundreds of years ago.
The film also won the People’s Choice award at the Banff film festival in Canada late last year.
Mr Cope told GOLD 1242 Gippsland News’ Greg Allen he was fortunate to have his film accepted to these festivals because his film had been serialised for television.
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“We’re very lucky because most festivals have a ruling that series can’t actually be accepted as finalists, but they’ve taken exception to my film obviously which I’ve been very very fortunate for,” Mr Cope said.
The film has taken much of the past decade to shoot and produce.
“It’s coming on about eight years since I actually started that journey, but it’s been full-on ever since,” Mr Cope said.
“It took me two years to make the film, which was a very long process, and in the meantime I’ve actually been going back to Mongolia each year for three or four months running journeys.”
It’s not time for celebration yet; Mr Cope said writing a book has also been keeping him occupied and the transcript is due to the publisher today.
“Once the book process is finished then I’ll have a chance to start thinking about the next big project,” Mr Cope said.
“Part of the journey is actually digesting it and making a film and writing about it, which is also a rewarding process.”
The book will be published early next year.
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Despite film and book production taking his time, Mr Cope has already put some consideration into his next project; possibly a trip fraught with political as well as physical challenges.
“A few ideas, but one of them is to journey from north-west China across Tibet to Cashmere following the route of a… group of Nomads who made an exodus from China back in the late 1940s,” Mr Cope said.
On the Trail of Genghis Khan aired in six parts on the ABC in 2010.
