Björn Heregger, Interview

Short interview with Björn Heregger concerning the movie Spurtreu, “faithful line”. This young guide from Arlberg, Austria, put on his bottle-green freebirds to accompany Stefan Häusl and Hanno Mackowitz in the realization of this a-typical video.

Black Crows: How long have you known Stefan and is he a regular ski partner?
Björn: I met Stefan almost 10 years ago while skiing at the Arlberg. Since then we’ve teamed up and learned a lot from each other. We were traveling on the Freeride World Tour for a few years together where Stefan shows off his skills. I decided to head in a different direction and finished my mountain guide’s exams last summer. We still manage to ski a lot together and it’s always great fun to ski and do a little exploring with him…

Black Crows: How did the idea of this movie start?
Björn: We already did 6 movies together. When we did DASEIN (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bFEoPg0UBU) a few years ago, we were overwhelmed by the success it had on the internet and at various film festival screenings. We didn’t want to do the same thing again but we still wanted to tell a story which “non-skiers“ understand as well. But somehow we couldn’t find the motivation and the time to sit together and talk about our new movie. Stefan has been busy with the World Tour, Hanno Mackowitz our cameraman, producer and many other things, was quite busy filming and I was investing a lot of time and energy in doing the exams to become a mountain guide. And to be honest – we’ve been a little bit exhausted too. Why should we do another movie when there are so many ski movies out there already – is it really worth it?
That was actually the mood with which we started to work for SPURTREU. Not very motivated and kind of exhausted. But this mood changed as we began working on the movie and that’s somehow the message we wanted this movie to carry. Just go out there and do something – there’s always a reward – one way or another!

Black Crows: Did you get the results you hoped for?
Björn: The feedback we received while showing the movie in various film-festivals this fall was pretty positive. Furthermore, even people who do not relate to skiing that much seem to understand the message we are trying to bring. In that kind of way we are really happy with the outcome.
On the other hand there’s always room for improvement. Planning certain projects, camera angle, timing, and so on – so making a movie means you are constantly learning how to do things better the next time.

Black Crows: It’s quite rare to see such a long film on the web, people usually favor short films, it’s also rather contemplative, do you think there is some German romantic feel in the movie?
Björn: Although we knew that a movie with a duration of more than five minutes would not be watched by masses of people, we wanted to get it online for free so that some people still have the opportunity to enjoy the movie. The span of attention seems to be getting shorter and shorter – which is kind of sad for people who still believe that there’s more to a ski movie, and skiing in general, than flying from one spot to another in order to get the best snow or the gnarliest line or whatever. With our movies we always wanted to motivate people to go out and enjoy this beautiful sport themselves.
In that sense people can find some romantic feeling within our movies.

Black Crows: Is there some special moments from the shoot that spring to mind?
Björn: Skiing the north face of the Kuchenspitze was for sure one of the highlights – not only in the movie but also in our skiing career. The whole process took us two years, from the first idea of skiing this mountain, which is located in our home skiing area Arlberg, to finally climbing the face, clicking into the bindings and dropping in to the 50° steep north facing slopes.
In April 2016 it took us two attempts to finally get the whole thing filmed. The first time we were there, the conditions were really bad and the steep ice band at the top of the line, which is the crux of the route, wasn’t in good shape. We waited for a few more snowstorms to hit our region, skied a couple of other steep lines around the area and then finally, during the last days of April 2016, conditions were ideal. 20cm of fresh spring powder without any wind made the climbing quite exhausting but the skiing was a pleasure…!

Black Crows: Does it call for a next episode?
Björn: We will see – we don’t have any set plans at the moment – except that there will be something…

 

Articles associés


Spurtreu, the double act