What defines a movie? Recently I had the insanely awesome pleasure of attending the Powder Magazine Video Awards in Park City, UT, and it made me question what a movie is. I tended to categorize ski films separately from every other type of film media (major motion pictures, television). They were in a league of their own; they show the best athletes in the best sport (don't question it, it's a fact and I will fight to the death on this) in settings that are so fantastical yet so real it makes anyone who considers him or herself a powder junkie drool with delight and green with envy all at once. A great ski film has expert skiers shaking in the knees because of the extremity of the situations these pros put themselves in, but at the same time has them wanting to get there; the drive to get to that level is what propels the sport forward and keeps bringing people to the sport year after year. The Powder Awards are the Oscars to this group of individuals, where all the hard work being put into these ski films can be honored.
As much as I love these films I'd never considered them "movies" like I would 300 or Must Love Dogs (these two choices brought to you from the randomness of my sub-conscious) because I never really thought of them as telling a story. Sometimes you'll get a rare gem like Sherpas Cinema's All.I.Can (2011), but generally they are more of an action sports documentary with great soundtracks and amazing visuals. In reality I was being incredibly narrow in my scope, and very dense in my viewing. Ski films are actually the best movies of all because they are able to tell a story without words. They're visual poetry, open to interpretation and meaning something different to every person who watches. Skiers see one thing, outsiders see another. I went to MSP's Superheroes of Stoke premiere at Snowbird this year with some complete newbies this year and they came out kicking themselves for not having taken up skiing before. I came out seeing the possibilities for the season ahead. It's natural beauty in its truest form; ski films show the balance between the beauty and the destruction out there. It shows the skiers who are out there taming the soaring peak of Alaska's Chugach mountains and those who fell victim to the danger that surrounds everyone who clicks into a pair of skis.
I could wax poetic, or at least wax, about skiing and these movies until you stopped reading and permanently blocked this page from your browser for being so pedantic, but I won't. I'll leave it at this, ski films are the best movies out there, telling the truest, simplest story there is; it's just up to you to determine what.
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