Lillian Frank

For many, the coming winter carries with it an ever-growing sense of dread: shortening days, long, dark nights and storms repeatedly covering Brunswick in ice and snow. But the whoops, cheers and laughs emanating from Kresge Auditorium on Thursday night told a different story entirely.

Filled with glamorous shots of skiers and snowboarders masterfully carving, spinning and flipping their way down picturesque snow-capped peaks, a screening of “Beyond the Fantasy”—a feature-length ski movie by the Jackson, Wyoming-based production company Teton Gravity Research (TGR)—had attendees waiting anxiously for the first flakes of the season to start falling.

“Everyone’s just itching to get on the slopes,” Ilo Holdridge ’25, one of the event’s organizers, said of the screening. “It really just brings the energy in the room up.”

“Beyond the Fantasy,” TGR’s 29th annual ski movie, struck a more comedic note than previous films from the production company, with the athletes acting out goofy skits and slapstick jokes interspersed between segments of extreme skiing and snowboarding.

But the movie still touched on some more serious notes, highlighting the dangers that the athletes faced, from season-ending injuries to scrapes with death—as they traveled to locations in Austria, Norway, Alaska, British Columbia and Wyoming in search of steep mountains and deep snow.

Put together by Ilo Holdridge and his brother Dudley Holdridge ’27, two of the co-leaders of Bowdoin’s Ski and Ride club, the event was inspired by the lively atmosphere at yearly screenings of TGR films in Portland.

“For the past three or four years, both Ilo and I have gone to the premiere of the annual [TGR] film in Portland at the State Theater,” Dudley Holdridge said. “There’s always been a great community there—it’s just a ton of people getting loud, seeing people do some cool stuff on skis and sharing the love for the outdoors. And we both thought that it would be cool to bring something like that to Bowdoin.”

In order to mirror the festive environment at the State Theater, the screening on campus featured a raffle of winter accessories, ski passes and other gear prior to the start of the movie—including several items from Woods and Waters Outdoor Gear Exchange, located in downtown Brunswick.

Ilo Holdridge, who has helped run Ski and Ride for three of his four years at Bowdoin, emphasized that the event was part of the club’s mission of increasing access to skiing and snowboarding on campus.

“We provide shuttle vans to the mountains on a weekly basis that are free, funded by Bowdoin, and this film [mirrors that]: increasing the stoke by showing this film on campus with free admission,” he said. “Skiing has historically been a pretty exclusive sport, and the more barriers you can remove, the easier it is to [form a community around the sport], the more people are going to be excited about it.”

Dudley Holdridge mentioned that TGR movies, which feature eye-catching cinematography, an engaging soundtrack and an impressive slate of athletes, seemed like the perfect way to spread excitement about skiing on campus.

“They have a team of some of the best athletes in the world, at least in the skiing realm. Every year they spend a lot of the winter going to some pretty extraordinary places and shooting, they’ve always got a really sick soundtrack that gets people fired up…. It really differs from other ski films,” he said. “They also work really hard on sharing the message about climate change and how important it is to combat it—otherwise these opportunities [to ski and snowboard] just won’t be possible anymore.”

For many of those in the audience, the showing of “Beyond the Fantasy” was a chance to see some of their favorite athletes in action—from 17-year-old prodigy freeskier Kai Jones to Norwegian internet sensation Nikolai Schirmer.

Khalil Wilkinson ’28 mentioned that his passion for skiing, combined with recommendations from friends who had seen previous TGR films, brought him to the screening. While he mentioned that the lack of narrative focus in “Beyond the Fantasy” wasn’t his favorite, he still enjoyed most of the movie.

“I was hoping for more of a storyline—it was [often] just a lot of awesome shots of people skiing,” Wilkinson said. “[But] generally, I thought it was sick…. I loved the Nikolai Schirmer section. I’ve watched all of his videos, so it was really cool to see him ski.”

Those who were unable to attend the screening on campus can see “Beyond the Fantasy” at the State Theater on Friday, November 15, at 7:30 p.m.