I love when ski movies can evolve beyond the typical narrative, and often the best way to do that is to bring contemporary skiing to pop culture, or in this case, aspects of historical culture. is to connect it to. “Spacecraft”, by a stroke of creative genius combined with research and luck, uncovers strange similarities and combines the unique historical space footage of the 1960s with his best freeskiing of the 21st century. Use them side by side to bring your cool ideas to life.
All good ski films have a storyline, some mundane, some heritage, some documentary in nature, some dependent on pure stalking, and some subversive. Arc’teryx athletes Sam Cucci and Cole Richardson teamed up with CK9 Studio’s Clay Mitchell and Simon Shave to create something completely different with “Spacecraft.”
A few falls, slides, and even accidents blend perfectly with the theme, as the ski space analogy plays out in a natural way. Parallel lines start flowing early on and you are taken to Cutch’s home, the Selkirk Mountains surrounding Nelson, British Columbia, to watch Cutch defy gravity in a way that only skiers on Earth can: fly and float. , watch as it moves across the ocean. Snowy scenes in the depths of another world, layered with early space mission training footage, feel like a natural combination. You would think skiers like Cucchi would follow a similar training regime, and they do. Cucchi’s mother is a gymnast and black belt, and he has been training and competing since he was 13 years old. He endured the disappointment of his two seasons, falling instead. He qualified for the Freeride World Tour. At the end of the 2017-18 season, Cucci was asked to lead a film crew around Whitewater, his home mountain. And Cucci’s demonstration of lines that make this region so incredible became a significant part of subsequent films, earning him the title of “Discovery.” Winner of the “Of the Year” award at the International Freeski Film Festival (iF3).
Originally slated to be a duo project in 2022, “Spacecraft” evolved with Cucci primarily taking the lead after Richardson was injured in an accident in Japan. With the season interrupted by two injuries, Cucci continued to work with his remaining budget and CK9 studio. “It feels completely different,” Cucci told me. “The fact that we were able to get that footage shows it to be authentic in a fresh way that no one has ever seen before. That’s what I was trying to do at the same time as introducing it.”
After all, the juxtaposition of historic moon landings, early space travel, and training footage with some truly epic skiing is mesmerizing. The movie isn’t long enough for its ideas to become stale, leaving you on the edge of your seat wondering what they’ll show you next. And skiing in a “spacecraft” can often feel as unattainable as a trip to the moon, reminding us what the landscapes of the planets we’re actually playing on are like. Masu.
