Athletes Eric Jackson, Leanne Pelosi and Director Travis Robb heat up “Winterpeg’s” Premier of “Black Winter” . Prairies Tour Part 2 of 2.

Next on the Black Winter “prairie tour” was the fine city of Winnipeg, Manitoba featuring an IMAX screening of the movie and a hang session with athletes Eric Jackson, Leanne Pelosi and director Travis Robb. The crew at Royal Sports and Kings Snow, Skate, Surf along with Monster Energy wrangled up the snowboard community which is pretty hefty considering the town’s proximity to the mountains. But in spite of its isolation from anything considerably vertical and snowy it has produced some great riders and more recently the young Andrew Geeves (also in the movie).

Premiering the movie on an IMAX screen raises the energy level a bit especially when the director is also in the house and excited to see his work projected on a 72 ft wide x 53 ft high canvas. The fine detail of the athletes “crash-face” comes across much better on a screen that size and so do those sketchy but salivary big mountain lines. But better than IMAX is having the ‘real thing’ present and have the riders connect with the audience in person by sharing stories and signing autographs. Turns out some of the best stories came from the locals, like the history lesson that Leanne Pelosi got from a Flin Flon local. Yes, Flin Flon is a town in Manitoba and it’s named after a man called Flintabody Flonitan. Let that fun word combo soak in a minute….
As the movie progressed, the crowd showed their love for Leanne and Eric’s parts and gave the “that’s our boy!!” props for Andrew Geeves.  After seeing many of these premieres in the last few weeks I would say that Chas Guldemond’s part always leaves a hush in the audience as people try to wrap their brain around the number of rotations he does.