What can we learn about living simply from Turkey’s 300-year-old snowboarding scene?
- Text by Shelley Jones
- Photography by W.Dunstan©2016 Patagonia, Inc.
In the opening lines of voiceover to Foothills – a 15-minute short film about a remote, but incredibly old, Turkish snowboarding community – the film’s director Alex Yoder explains that when he mentioned his chosen destination for his new snowboarding film most people asked a lot of the same questions.
“The idea that there’s snow in this part of the world was hard to grasp,” he says. “It didn’t help that I couldn’t offer more details because we were basically winging it. Relying on a single connection to a guy named Ishmael that we met via Facebook.”
The premise of this inspirational movie was exactly that; in a world where modern technology makes everything seem so accessible Alex wanted to travel somewhere unexplored and largely untouched to see what he could learn from a simpler, less environmentally harmful way of life.
It’s a productive journey and Alex’s insights are revealed in personal voiceover covering stunning footage of Turkish culture, traditions and a less-than-conventional cobbled-together snowboarding scene.
Now the film is touring the world, with Alex by its side, and Huck is excited to be hosting the London screening with Patagonia at Village Underground in Shoreditch on November 16, 7.30pm – 9.30pm.
Keen to extend the conversation, Huck is also inviting some key players in the environmental design and simple living world – sustainability expert Sophie Thomas (Thomas Matthews) and wooden surfboard builder Paul Reisberg (Arbo Surfboards) – to take part in a panel discussion, hosted by our editor-at-large Michael Fordham, which will consider how Alex’s learnings in Turkey may inform the industry at large.
Tickets are free but you must register at Eventbrite.
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