Look, no compendium of snowboard cinema would be complete without at least one Russian helicopter – preferably a ropey, ex-military MI-8. It is the travel cliché par excellence, a sure fire sign that we are ‘stepping into the unknown on a search for powder’. Travel, you see, is an integral part of snowboard film making, and over the years riders have documented new lines as far afield as Chile, New Zealand, Korea, Japan, Alaska and the Himalayas. Nowhere quite offers the same dirt cheap heli drops and guaranteed tales of bribery as the former USSR, however, and trips to the region have featured in more films than Jenna Jameson – notably the classic UK flick Day Tripper, Rip Curl’s The Search and Absinthe’s Now/Here. And if your MI-8 is being piloted by a vodka-soaked former Kremlin man with links to the mafia, all the better.
