Der Schwarze Spur (The Black Line)

One spring day, the guys from Ebis Films ventured into the mountains of Japan for a shoot and couldn’t help but notice the surreal, silvery quality of the snow, which had been glossed over with a fine-film crust. It reminded them so much of a photo featured in Kuroi Spur (The Black Line), the 1965 book by pioneering skiing cinematographer Keizo Miura, that they made this three-minute vignette as a tribute. In it, snowflakes waft like fine metal shavings, snow dust floats over the crust like a specter and ski tracks look like graphite lines on a chrome-finished slope.