Before Everest

This documentary from filmmaker Richard Riddiford casts new light on a celebrated historical event; the successful 1953 ascent of Mount Everest by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. New Zealander Earle Riddiford organised an earlier Himalayan expedition in 1951, which led directly to Kiwi involvement in the 1953 British-sponsored attempt on the world's highest mountain. But cutting remarks about Riddiford's character in Hillary's final memoir haunted his family. Anna Riddiford's research into her "difficult" father spurred her filmmaker brother to re-examine that fateful 1951 expedition.

He was an extraordinary human being who created such a legacy for New Zealand but we did want to put the story straight. If my father hadn't organised the 1951 expedition, there's no way Hillary would have got on the British expedition in 1953.

– Filmmaker Richard Riddiford in an interview with Wilderness magazine, June 2020

Key Cast & Crew

Tom Scott

Subject

Richard Riddiford

Director, Writer, Narrator, Editor, Camera