Deep/Shinsetsu

Sometimes, words aren’t necessary. In Deep/Shinsetsu, filmmaker Masaki Sekiguchi (Presence: 40 Days in Greenland, Mountainfilm 2008) lets the images speak for themselves. Filmed in Japan after what appears to be a 100-year storm, this short is a melodic and meditative portrait of skiing powder—chest-deep powder. The film is stripped of the genre’s usual racket: no voice-overs, jibbers, helicopters or hip-hop music here. Instead, it cuts straight to the essentials—the wash of white and the joy of bounding through bottomless snow.