Anything is Possible: The Diary of an Adventure Film Maker - Tapa dura

Leo Dickinson is unique, both as a film-maker and in his pursuit of not just one but a whole range of high-risk adventure sports. He filmed Messner on Everest, Julian Nott's balloon altitude record and some of the largest formation skydives yet achieved. With over thirty international awards to his credit, he recorded these and other historic 'firsts' in a visually spectacular book, Filming the Impossible. Since then, neither Leo's output nor his intrepid disregard for danger has diminished. If no longer dazzled by the 'star' performances of Olympian record-breakers, he has found a delectable freedom in the sheer fun of life at the very edge of the possible. He overcame acute claustrophobia and took to underwater cave exploration - first in the forbidding gloom of the Wookey Hole complex, and then in the awesome Wakulla Springs of Florida, where he filmed pre-Ice Age mastodon bones and his companions achieved a record depth using new rebreathing apparatus. This book also recounts a hilarious balloon flight over the Himalayas and the making of his most ambitious film - a history of the Eiger. Leo recalls the unforgettable Don Whillans, a moving encounter with the veteran climbers Heckmair and Harrer, and revels in the company of many other great characters who, without seeking headlines, are devoted to the maxim of all dangerous sports - anything is possible.

Leo Dickinson was just twenty-four when he persuaded Yorkshire Television to finance his first film, an ascent of the Eiger's notoriously dangerous North Face. The result was a prize-winning film that established Leo Dickinson's reputation as 'unquestionably the world's leading adventure film-maker' (American Alpine Journal). Since then he has made over fifty television films, including the record of a terrifying descent from Everest by canoe and, perhaps his best film, a reconstruction of the history of the Eiger in which he re-enacted John Harlin's 5,000 feet fall down the mountain face. Peter Gillman described it in the Sunday Times as providing 'some of the most breathtaking climbing sequences ever filmed.' His recent films are 'Into the Black and Blue Holes', 'Right up the Zipper' (on sky-diving), 'Flight of the Windhorse' (on Himalayan ballooning) and his amazing Wakulla Springs film, shown on Channel 4 last autumn.