Film
Select Films
Treeline
Quietly, patiently, trees endure. They are the oldest living beings we come to know during our time on earth, living bridges into our planet’s expansive past. Treeline is a film celebrating the forests on which our species has always depended—and around which some skiers and snowboarders etch their entire lives. Follow a group of snow-seekers, scientists and healers as they explore the birch forests of Japan, the red cedars of British Columbia and the bristlecones of Nevada, as they explore an ancient story written in rings. (Producer)
Jordan Manley/Narrows Media + Patagonia Films
Jumbo Wild
A gripping, hour-long documentary film by Sweetgrass Productions that tells the true story of the decades-long battle over the future of British Columbia’s iconic Jumbo Valley and highlights the tension between the protection of wilderness and the backcountry experience and ever-increasing development interests in wild places. Set against a backdrop of incredible backcountry ski and snowboard footage, Jumbo Wild documents all sides of a divisive issue bringing the passionate local fight to protect the Jumbo Valley to audiences around the world. (Producer)
Sweetgrass Productions + Patagonia Films
Torn
On Oct. 5, 1999, legendary climber Alex Lowe was tragically lost on the slopes of a Tibetan mountain. Miraculously surviving the avalanche was Alex’s best friend and climbing partner, renowned mountaineer Conrad Anker. After the tragedy, Anker and Alex’s widow, Jennifer, fell in love and married, and Anker stepped in to help raise Alex’s three sons. Max Lowe, Alex’s eldest son, turns the lens on his family when his father’s body is uncovered 17 years after he died in the avalanche. Along the family’s journey to finally put their father’s body to rest, Max unearths secrets about a mythicized man and the conflicting truths that have been buried since Alex Lowe’s death. (Associate Producer)
Max Lowe + National Geographic Documentary Films
Rural Runners
In 2020, Chloe Maxmin, a 28-year-old climate activist, became the youngest woman elected to the state senate in Maine history. Chloe and her campaign manager, Canyon Woodward, rewrote the strategy for progressive success in rural America and won two campaigns in red districts where they were expected to lose. Rural Runners follows Chloe and Canyon on the campaign trail alongside Canyon’s burgeoning rise as a champion ultra-distance runner. Their approach rehumanizes our deeply divided political system, offering hope and a path toward a healthier democracy. (Producer)
Forest Woodward Photography + Gnarly Bay
Raised From Earth
Under the gaze of southern Arizona’s cinnamon-hued Canelo Hills, a mother shares ancient building traditions with her three sons. In Puebloan creation stories, adobe structures, like people, emerge from the earth and return to the earth. For Athena Steen, it’s the family memories, skills, knowledge, love, laughter—and the clay itself—that endure. (Producer)
Forest Woodward Photography + Patagonia Films + Workwear
A Wild Idea
Wild Idea’s Buffalo Company in South Dakota is on a mission to regenerate the prairie ecosystem by reintroducing and increasing the free-ranging herd size of its largest native herbivore, the American bison. Wild Idea’s general manager Jilian Jones sums up the reciprocal purpose of their work: “We have to have healthy land, healthy soils, and then that feeds the buffalo, which then in turn feeds us.” (Producer)
Forest Woodward Photography + Patagonia Films + Workwear
Running Up For Air
In 2012, Jared Campbell decided to run up and down Salt Lake City’s Grandeur Peak for 24 hours, to raise money for air quality advocacy work. The following year, a few friends joined in. The next year: even more. After 11 years, Campbell’s solo project has morphed into Running Up For Air: a worldwide movement with dozens of races, hundreds of runners and tens of thousands of dollars raised around the globe. This is a story about how running builds community that can jump-start change far beyond the trails. (Producer)
Forest Woodward Photography + Patagonia Films
China: A Skier's Journey
Skiing as sport is in it’s infancy in China, a phenomenon of the country’s exploding middle class. As a means of survival, however, it is thousands of years old, a stone age hunter-gatherer technology born in the Altai mountains where China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Siberia merge. On a vast trajectory that spans 11,000km of Northern China, Chad Sayers and Forrest Coots touch down into the rich past and dizzying future of these two respective Chinese ski cultures. As one rapidly expands, they find the other is at risk of disappearing. (Associate Producer)
Jordan Manley/Narrows Media + Arc'teryx
Iran: A Skier's Journey
“Should we go?” Chad Sayers and Forrest Coots decide, indeed, they should. Upon arriving in Iran, they are welcomed with profound warmth, stunned by the immense beauty of the landscape and culture. Threaded through Tehran’s bustling bazaars to Isfahan’s dazzling mosques, the two skiers get a glimpse at the complex dichotomy that divides public and private lives in Iran. As journalist Elaine Sciolino writes, “Iran can be dazzling, and light-filled, a reflection of its complexities; but it can also be cold, confusing, and impenetrable.” To travel to Iran is a reminder of the virtues of travel itself. Nothing is as it first appears. At private ski chalets atop slopes of the Alborz and Zagros mountains, rules and customs relent. (Associate Producer)
Jordan Manley/Narrows Media + Arc'teryx
Crossing Home: A Skier's Journey: Series Finale
For travellers, life on the road ultimately winds to an end, and the compass points towards home. In the series finale, after excursions through ski cultures across the globe, Chad Sayers and Forrest Coots go back to the beginning - British Columbia. Embarking on a 3 week expedition, they boat, bushwack, ski, and packraft the spine of the Coast mountains. From interior plateau, steep chutes and over the Homathko Icefield, to the lush, carpeted coastal inlets of the Pacific coast. What is the meaning of home? A cast of characters help them understand what that term truly means. (Associate Producer)
Jordan Manley/Narrows Media + Arc'teryx + Destination British Columbia