Stepping out of New York City’s December chill, a herd of black coats piles into a dimly lit bar. While some seek immediate liquid deliverance, others gravitate toward a jazz quartet at the back of the room. Almost on cue, a trumpet blast cuts through the din and a snare drum rasps. Then, an unexpected accompaniment: images of skiers slashing turns and flying off cliffs projected onto the white wall alongside the musicians. Suddenly, the crowd is tethered to the beat, live musical crescendos sending skiers airborne and dancing down rock-marked faces.

Professional skier Xander Guldman dreamed of such an immersive ski-movie experience for years — one that crossed disciplines and connected beyond the ski world. Now it was here, in a Chinatown bar, a world away from his hometown of Truckee, California. On stage, his sibling and trumpet player, Jordan, led the band. Together with childhood friend and cinematographer Colter Fellows, the trio had created FORM — an independent ski movie wrapped in a live jazz show that explored a new kind of line.

“Growing up, if you wanted to ski professionally you needed to have certain sponsors and work with certain production companies—that was the only way to do it,” explains Xander. “Now that playbook is out the window.”

Ski movies have long played an essential role in the sport, showcasing athletic talent, inspiring progression, and sharing whimsy. Many of us grew up going to theaters every fall to catch our fix from the likes of Warren Miller, Teton Gravity Research (TGR) or Matchstick Productions (MSP). That ritual shifted with the proliferation of Internet platforms, with videos available in more bite-sized packages year-round. The newest chapter — with FORM joining films from athlete Mallory Duncan, the Armada Ski team and others — suggests a shifting narrative: after post-COVID hibernation, crowds don’t just want to see films, they want to experience them.

The bar bobs along to swirling jazz notes as the film hits its final spins and slashes. Unlike the whoops of beanie-and-puffy-clad crowds in mountain towns, these well-dressed urban viewers seem entranced in ski-movie bliss. Chinatown may be a long way from the mountains, but tonight they’re right here in the room.

Until Warren Miller began producing annual feature-length ski films in 1950, skiing on camera had been relegated to short news clips or choreographed Hollywood scenes. With the sport as muse and his camera as modus operandi, Miller and a gaggle of professional skiers flipped the script, charting the ski world for decades, visiting some of the most exotic sliding locales on the planet before bringing it back to neighborhood theaters every fall. These showings became an event, with skiers from the movies raffling off gear at premieres around North America and the world.

As the nascent ski industry blossomed over the coming decades, other filmmakers joined in. Some, like Greg Stump, ushered in a new wave of freeskiing athletes, turning former counterculture extreme skiers like Glen Plake, Scott Schmidt and Doug Coombs into household names. Though these movies made it from the silver screen to blocky VHS tapes and eventually DVDs, the premiere remained a pinnacle ski-season kickoff.

“As a kid, I was so psyched about the annual ski premiere cycle. A select number of production companies visited the same time every year — that was the drive and excitement.”

_{— XANDER GULDMAN}

Xander and Jordan were raised on films by Poor Boyz Productions, TGR and MSP, crews whose work brought freeskiing to new heights. Across the pond in Europe, Sweden’s Free Radicals series joined the rising freeski tide, followed by celebrated full-length features from Norway’s Field Productions and Austria’s Legs of Steel.

But as online video platforms evolved and freeskiing exploded, smaller producers began to fill in the cracks. Ski movies began appearing online as fast as editors could cut them, accelerating when the COVID-19 pandemic put a temporary stop to in-person premieres.

So much quality content so quickly that even rising pros like Xander, tapped into the scene, had a hard time keeping up. “[Watching videos] became a to-do list at some point because there were so many,” adds Xander. “That’s a beautiful thing, but the volume was overwhelming.”

Then, around 2023, came Blackcountry Journal, an art-film-meets-ski-flick project produced by and starring Mallory Duncan, another Tahoe-raised pro. Shot in crisp black-and-white, Blackcountry combined city scenes, mountains, jazz, and poetry into a story told through skiing. For Xander, it felt personal.

Prior to this, Xander had struggled to fully express himself skiing. Though he’d risen from competition ranks as a college kid to ski the Freeride World Tour, even filming with his marquee sponsor, Head Skis, and MSP (with whom he now has a regular turn), at times he found it hard to see meaning in his career path. But in Mallory, he found a willing confidant; both came up through the ranks of Sugar Bowl Academy Freeski on Donner Pass, near Truckee, and when Xander reached out after the release, a creative friendship blossomed.

“Mallory and I talked a lot about how [these projects] should be an extension of you. Ways to showcase who you are within the ski world rather than making yourself into what you’re seeing around you.”

_{— XANDER GULDMAN}

It wouldn’t be long before Xander also called Jordan. Though the siblings grew up skiing together, the music of the household was jazz. So, while Xander chose skiing, Jordan moved eastward, eventually pursuing a Master’s at the Manhattan School of Music in New York. Now on opposite ends of the continent, Xander proposed an alliance. “I’ve always been interested in mixed media,” says Jordan. “But doing a project with my brother took me back to being a little kid playing in the backyard together.”

Knowing Jordan had helped score dance films, and inspired by the energy of live musical performance, Xander pitched a show that not only played off film images, but became the original audio for the piece in live time. Jordan took the idea and ran with it. “I’m a bit visual when I think of music,” they explain. “When I close my eyes it’s shapes, and when you have dancers, they’re making those shapes in real life while you’re making music. Getting that to happen with skiing was a fun way to think about things.”

During winter 2025, the pair got together with friend Colter to film Xander sessioning the backcountry off Donner Summit, an iconic area in the history of skiing and snowboarding. Colter’s experience in shooting music videos provided a unique perspective of this familiar landscape, and his sharp eye for dynamic shots proved to be integral in merging the worlds of music and skiing. Jordan brought a trumpet to experiment with sounds and melodies, occasionally jumping in front of the lens for a shot. Through several rounds of editing and score tinkering, they finished the framework for their experiential show. Jordan brought in a trio of musician friends, teaching them the visual cues of ski tricks to help align the natural musical progressions: a nose butter signaled a change in groove, while a big 360 could kick off a new drum sequence.

At the same time, Mallory had been working on his own immersive event, incorporating live hip-hop from artist Chima the Stubborn into his newest film LINES. When the two parties learned of their parallel projects, they teamed up, setting the stage for a five-stop tour through the West ending in New York City. The synergy was so strong that Jordan’s quartet and Chima closed each event with a collab performance over a hybrid of clips featuring both Xander and Mallory. Crowds went wild. “A lot of people came up after the show to say they were inspired to pick up an instrument again,” says Xander. “And some mentioned they’d start skiing again after a ten-year break.”

The tour culminated on that night in New York, but wasn’t the only immersive show to hit the Big Apple that fall. A few weeks earlier, Armada Skis had brought in ORNADA, featuring a live rock band and rapper playing a raucous show over Armada’s athlete team video.

For Xander, Jordan, Mallory and their teams, this big-brand project was validation, proof that audiences are ready for something different as they dream up their next iterations. “This is all part of an evolution—there have never been so many different ways to experience skiing,” says Xander. “The gates feel wide open.”

RELATED | Watch Form, The Intersection of Free Skiing and Jazz — a Film by Colter Fellows

RELATED | Read the story about Xander Guldman — How a Unique Ski Style Makes the Difference.

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