Every once in a while there’s an edit that comes along and is more than just snowboarding. Last year it was all about Jerome Tanon’s masterpiece ‘The Eternal Beauty Of Snowboarding’ which, naturally, you will have seen by now. It did with one Handycam what thousands of hours of cinematic RED cam footage and scripted voiceovers have failed to capture – it showed the brethrenship, the hilariousness and the absolute futility of what we do and by God, it was beautiful.
Whilst this isn’t quite TEBOS (as no one is calling it), brothers Jake and Joe Simpson have nailed the same trick of making a video with snowboarding in it something much more than that. It’s a family portrait. It’s a short film capturing two teenagers coming of age and their self-discovery. It shows snowboarding at its absolute best, when it really is about having fun with your best friends rather than just hashtagging that you are. There’s no pretence here, no bravado, just pure, genuine stoke.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this isn’t really a 300-word write-up about a web edit to drive clicks to get ad revenue. Maybe this the start of a writer’s mental breakdown as he comes to terms with living alone with just a cat and a dog instead of humans for the winter. A cry for help. But I’d like to think that me blinking a lot through the intro to the above was due to the Simpson Bros nailing that rare trick – a snowboarding video that hits you right in the feels.
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