‘Advice for Girls’, the new talent-heavy ski film which features an entirely female cast and crew (the first ski movie to do this), showed for two nights at the Roxy theater in Missoula the sixth and seventh of December. There was a strong showing from the Missoula ski community, especially women and girls. Many showed up in costume, decked out in things such as sparkly face paint and pink fluffy boas.
Once everyone had their popcorn, the film maker, Addy Jacobsen(d), and two of the producers got up in front and introduced the film. Then, after a couple sponsors, the film opened with a clip of Jacobsen reading her poem she wrote early in her ski career. She talked about the advice she would give a younger version of herself and other female skiers in times of doubt when faced with a majority male sport.
The film continued with a number of female skiers sharing their experiences of coming up in the ski industry, never getting the credit or recognition they deserve. Multiple different skiers talk about the “token female” in ski movies, where there’s one woman in a mostly male cast who doesn’t get almost any camera time. This pattern shows up in a lot of famous ski movies over time.
Then the skiing started. The film featured well known female skiers like Devin Logan, Amie Engerbretson, and Lynsey Dyer, as well as younger skiers like Rylee Watson, Caroline Brokaw, and Autumn Evanko, who stomps a backflip off a cliff in one of the final scenes of the film.
The film has an emphasis on deep pow shots from the 2022-2023 record breaking snow season. It also features big cliff lines and a sick park edit mainly featuring Logan, the first ever US women’s slopestyle Olympic medalist. There’s even a group party run with most of the cast and some random female skiers at Snowbird in Utah.
All in all, ‘Advice for Girls’ brings much needed attention to the problematic ratio of male to female skiers in the ski movie industry. It repeatedly calls for girls and young women to “take up space” in the sport, and shows female skiers helping and inspiring other female skiers. Hopefully this will spur the beginning of a vital change in the ski industry and get female skiers the representation and screen-time they deserve in future films.
