Warren Miller Partners With Al Gore
Warren Miller Entertainment (WME) has just announced a new collaboration with the Climate Reality Project (CRP), a climate change education initiative founded and chaired by former Vice President Al Gore. On its face, the partnership is an odd one. After all, Warren Miller is the founding father of the modern ski film industry, a man who helped define ski culture and is responsible for some of the most spectacular big-mountain stoke of all time, from 1949's Steep and Light to the neon-clad joy of Steep and Deep and beyond. Gore is a bit stiff by comparison, and his only film to date—An Inconvenient Truth—has almost no stoke (pretty much the opposite, in fact).
But the partnership is intended to raise awareness of climate change among snowsports enthusiasts and show them how it's impacting their sports. And when you think about it, probably nobody has more experience chasing snow—and, along the way, bearing witness to its increasing scarcity, the recession of alpine glaciers and seasonal climate abnormalities—than ski porn god Warren Miller. His production company has spent the past 63 years tracking back and forth across the globe, tracking snow wherever it can be found, from remote Alaskan ranges to rocky Iranian resort towns and the ocean-hugging mountains of Iceland.
The latest Warren Miller flick—Flow State (trailer below)—was filmed last year during the winter that wasn't and is about pro skiers hunting for scarce powder (as well as some far-out theory that the faster you go physically, the slower things appear mentally). Gore will be on-hand at a Denver screening of Flow State in November.
WME and CRP are starting a joint campaign "I Am Pro Snow" that will use the compelling, high-def footage from Flow State to spark a coversation among skiers and riders about climate change. More details about the campaign should surface in the coming month. In the meantime, check out the Flow State trailer: