On a Saturday night in Jackson, Wyoming, Sierra Schlag stands on stage of the Jackson Hole High School auditorium in a sweater she knit herself. “I should probably explain the name of our film tour,” she says, going on to explain the “girl dinner” social media trend of having a series of small snacks instead of a large meal. “We have a bunch of tiny, short films to make one full night of films.”
Schlag is one of the organizers of the Girl Winter Tour and the star of one of the six films, Nisei (plus one bonus film, Tami Razinger’s Mezclada, which was only shown at the Jackson stop). Nisei is about Schlag exploring her identity as the daughter of a Japanese immigrant. The other films’ topics span the gamut from concussion awareness to the moments in the in-between spaces to combining BASE jumping and snowboarding. But all the films have two things in common. First, they were created by and star women. Second, the level of skiing and snowboarding will have you counting down the days until lifts spin and skintracks fill in.
Along with Schlag, the other women behind Girl Winter are Iz La Motte, Sara Beam Robbins and Katie Cooney. The four originally worked together on Advice for Girls, the highly successful, all-women’s ski film that sold out shows across the United States last year. The following winter, the Advice for Girls team split up to work on their own, smaller projects, but continued to support each other on the sidelines.
“Because we’re a small, scrappy team, we would have probably died if we tried to put out another feature right after that,” jokes Beam Robbins. “We stepped away from the feature, and we all went on and did our own thing and made projects that we were passionate about throughout the winter. Schlag had the idea of bringing our films together and showing them to a few audiences, and then that idea evolved into bringing together other women together who are making films.”
The Jackson stop was the tour’s premier, and was followed by a Park City, Utah, showing on Monday, Oct. 28. In next three weeks, Girl Winter will have 13 more shows across Colorado, Massachusetts, Vermont, Idaho, Oregon, California and Alaska.
The day after the Jackson premier, I join La Motte, Beam Robbins and Cooney for a bike ride in Teton Canyon, Wyoming. Their tour schedule is packed, leaving this as one of their only days off this month, but carving out time outside is a priority for the three.
As we pedal up the Millcreek trail, it’s unsurprising that La Motte, Cooney and Beam Robbins bring the same attitude to their day off as they do to the film tour. We flip between encouraging each other while sessioning features and talking about what it means to be a woman in the ski industry. Beam Robbins coaches me over a rollover and Cooney tows La Motte into a cruxy rock garden. In these moments, I can see the magic behind both Advice for Girls and Girl Winter. The team shuns the idea of the token female, focusing on collaboration over competition.
“We’re in this really cool time where there are so many female athletes out there getting to tell their own stories in their own ways,” says La Motte. “It’s exciting that young women and girls have so many women to look up to. We hope that by showcasing a whole cast of women on this tour, whether they’re in front of or behind the camera, that we can provide a variety of stories for people to relate to.”
“We are not in competition with one another. We’re all trying to create equality together and that’s going to take an army,” adds Beam Robbins. “How cool that we can come together to create women’s stories and allies can come together to watch them.”
Kindred, the film anchoring Girl Winter’s lineup, perhaps showcases that idea the most. The film tells the story of former US Ski Team members Devin Logan and Caroline Claire as they sift through what it means to retire from competitive freeskiing. They explore both the backcountry and their friendship, supporting each other through classic sidecountry hits, ski mountaineering objectives and coming to terms with their identities outside of competition. Beam Robbins and La Motte co-directed Kindred, and Logan and Claire shared a segment in Advice for Girls.
Logan, a three-time Olympian and Olympic silver medalist, says that, while freeskiing is an individual sport, working with the women on Kindred and with the Girl Winter tour is very much about the team.
“Having the support from each other, whether that’s in front of the camera, behind the camera, editing, it’s a team effort,” says Logan. “Having women that understand you, where we want to be, where we want to take women in freeskiing, we’re all on the same level, and I think Kindred showcases that in more ways than one. Rad skiing, rad storytelling, rad humans and just show casing all our talents.”
You can watch Nisei, Kindred and the other Girl Winter films on tour across the United States through November. To find a stop near you, visit girlwinterfilmtour.com/tickets.
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