My favorite ski movies aren’t made in the mountains. They don’t feature mouth-watering powder turns, dizzying heli drops, or Alaskan spines.
Instead, they’re shot in snow-laden parking lots and decaying urban plazas and, more often than not, are made by a group of people who can’t resist spending countless hours in vans that smell like old socks. Interested yet?
I’m talking about street skiing—the movies that happen in Minnesota rather than the backcountry and feature more handrails than untouched snow. From the outside, I’ll admit, the prospect seems grueling, uninviting, and ineffective at making me, or anyone else, want to go skiing. There’s a reason conglomerates haven’t started selling ski passes that offer access to 60-plus staircases covered in black ice behind those 7/11s you usually try to avoid worldwide.
But if you strip away the rugged exterior, many street skiing movies feel especially relatable, at least in spirit, and actually encourage getting after it. For the past decade or so, an elevated home video style has been in vogue among the street-inclined, with swooping camcorder shots and fisheye footage taking precedence over the sugar-rush sweet drone clips found elsewhere.
This is an aesthetic choice, sure. Authorial decisions add up, though, and shape the overall feeling of a movie. In these cases, it’s one that better captures regular, ad hoc ski trips with friends.
I haven’t tried to slide a quad kink and never will. But, like many others, I have tried to make a ski movie with whatever gear I have on hand. Far fewer skiers have relied on the hallmarks of bigger budget projects, like helicopters and exotic destinations, to do so. Even if it’s partially an illusion—street skiing in practice is as challenging and niche as it gets—an urban scene with park benches, rusting metal, and dirty snow seems less far away, even more so when those transmissions have the faint patina of a family VHS collection.
The b-roll and associated antics in street movies amplify that impression. The crews usually don’t sit down for interviews to bro out about the spot they’re about to hit or bolt on a story about redemption in the mountains. Rather, one non-skiing highlight from an old favorite is an epic, slow-mo snowball headshot set, hilariously, to a Three 6 Mafia song.
All of us, I hope, can remember derailing a ski day by pelting our nearest buddy with snow. While I shouldn’t defend table smashing or ill-advised canal jumps—at least in an article with my name attached to it—they’re also examples of memorable antics I’ve seen in films over the years.
These instances of goofing around and, maybe, getting into some trouble are an age-old ski tradition. The sport’s long had an irreverent streak. While you’ll certainly find it elsewhere (now’s a good time for an obligatory Nub TV plug), it does seem to surface most often in the streets. As the world continues to feel darker and more serious, those blasts of devil-may-care footage only become more refreshing. It’s nice sometimes to see the raw edges.
The buttoned-up Red Bulls of the ski world are lovely, meanwhile, but their outputs speak to the experience of skiing in a different way. I’ll gladly sit down for ten minutes and watch whatever insanity they’ve cooked up. I haven’t, however, raised two bazillion dollars to build my own park with a trampoline and a gymnast’s trapeze. Forgetting my ski helmet at home and lawn-darting the 16-stair down the street feels oddly reasonable by comparison.
Please, please don’t get it twisted, though—the sidewalk-bound crews aren’t just screwing around and throwing up middle fingers. I love Jackass. This isn’t Jackass. Ski movies shine when they’re built as laborious passion projects with athleticism and serious filmmaking chops (that could describe Jackass, too, but I digress). Capturing a sense of relatability isn’t enough, either. You gotta inspire and entertain. The venue doesn’t change that.
But watching a good movie, the work is obvious, with breakneck action supported by a deep bank of painstakingly gathered clips. Prolonged dead air doesn’t appear. One second, someone’s careening off a concrete wall; the next second, another skier’s leaping from the roof of a two-story building.
These can be true works of art, with inspired music choices, hard-to-believe tricks, and attentive editing. Look to Jesper Tjäder’s dressed-down departure from the mega terrain parks, the latest Magma entry, or LINE’s Daycare for proof. An overarching ethos—keep the focus on the toughest, most impressive skiing with minimal fluff (I’ll eagerly allow a snowball fight or two)—is prized here. As one telling YouTube comment below a cult hit, The Jetskis Movie, reads, “My attention span is just fine.” See ya, Instagram reels.
And all of it happens with quotidian materials. Prototypical ski movies focus on arresting peaks and billowing storms. Urban backdrops have less obvious allure. Oh, there’s the supermarket. Oh, there’s the statue I walk by every day. Oh, there’s the laundromat where I slipped on detergent—that place can go to hell. It’s in this humdrum environment, though, that the vision of skiers and filmmakers becomes even more striking.
They reimagine the places we’ve all visited, remixing what should be old hat into something you thought you knew, but didn’t. Years ago, Sherpas Cinema released a now-iconic movie called All.I.Can. In one segment, the dearly missed JP Auclair flew through the streets, carving a line through the gloomy darkness as he conjured a terrain park where there wasn’t one.
Sherpa’s name for the segment? A spark everyone has ready access to, provided they’re willing to get the crew together and try: Imagination.
Related: How a No-Budget Ski Movie Turned Two Friends Into Freeski Icons
