Produced in the centenary year of the first Everest expedition, ‘Everest by Those Who Were There’ follows Julie Summers, the great niece of Sandy Irvine, as she explores the history of the three earliest Everest expeditions.

Using the original footage shot by John Noel in 1922 and 1924, photos, artefacts and written records, as well as the expertise of prominent Everest mountaineers, Julie guides us from the first thoughts of climbing Everest in the 1890s, all the way up to the tragic disappearance of Mallory and Irvine in 1924.

The film is an opportunity, not just to celebrate the scientific, geographical, technological and mountaineering accomplishments of these early expeditions, but also to look again at the world’s highest peak. To reassess our relationship with it after more than a century of climbing, and to follow the threads of how it came to be a social, cultural and political nexus that still fascinates climbers and the wider public today.