Salomon TV To Debut Much-Anticipated 'Becoming History' Documentary
Twenty years ago a group of skiers called the New Canadian Air Force (NCAF) forever changed the sport of skiing. The central piece of equipment to this revolution was the Salomon Teneighty ski, which allowed the young freestylers to do things no one had ever seen before and push the sport in an entirely new direction. In 2017, most of the original members of the NCAF reunited in Whistler to celebrate the 20th anniversary, reminisce with friends and even do a bit of skiing. Salomon TV was there.
Now Becoming History, a new film from Salomon TV that debuts on January 23rd, takes ski fans inside the lives of the people who made this unique contribution to skiing history, including emotional personal accounts from the NCAF members themselves, never-before-seen footage of ski legend JP Auclair and the inside story on the creation of the Teneighty ski. At the Whistler reunion, Salomon TV sat down with the key players in skiing’s last major revolution to find out what they are doing today and hear their reflections on what was a special time in their lives.
Already the winner of the Jury Prize at the IF3 Festival in Montreal and a finalist at 12 other film festivals, Becoming History was led by longtime Salomon athlete Mike Douglas. The Whistler resident was himself a member of the NCAF and is the Founder and Director for Switchback Entertainment, which produces many of the Salomon TV episodes.
“After 20 years, a lot has changed,” Douglas says. “People move on in their lives and we rarely get to see each other anymore, so to have an excuse to get the original crew together was really nice. The human aspect of the reunion was definitely the best part, but it was also really fun to go through all the old footage that had been boxed up in my attic.”
Making the film gave Douglas an excuse to have those boxes of old 16 mm film shot in the early days digitally re-mastered in HD. The old film holds up extremely well in the episode and the footage looks beautiful. One of the gems he found was an old mini DV tape with a long-forgotten interview of his friend, Auclair, a NCAF member who passed away in a ski accident in 2014. “It's such a perfect portrait of JP and something no one has seen before,” Douglas says of the interview he conducted with Auclair.
“We expected older skiers from our 40-ish generation to enjoy the film, but have been surprised to have really positive feedback across the board, and from non-skiers as well,” Douglas adds.
The inside scoop on what led to Salomon developing the Salomon Teneighty ski is central to the storyline of Becoming History, and ski aficionados will no doubt love hearing about it from those who played a critical role in its development. Canada's national newspaper, The Globe and Mail, listed the Teneighty as one of the 150 great Canadian innovations of the past 150 years.
“I think a lot of skiers who are over 35 remember how skiing was dying in the mid-’90s and they'll probably remember the surge of energy the New Canadian Air Force and Teneighty put back into the sport,” Douglas says. “There's some nostalgia in this film. A lot of young skiers don't know the story so they seem to really enjoy seeing how it started. Someone recently told me after a show, 'These kinds of sport revolutions don't really happen anymore, and may never happen again thanks to social media and instant everything. To have it documented well is something special.'”
Becoming History will be available at http://tv.salomon.com/ beginning on January 23rd.
