Snow Business

Aspen’s four-day ski-and-snowboard film festival, The Meeting, gets under way tonight with the annual NEPSA Awards at the Wheeler Opera House. “The NEPSA Awards — that’s “Aspen” spelled backward — recognize local amateur filmmakers competing in the eighth annual film-shorts competition,” says Meredith McKee, spokeswoman for Aspen/Snowmass. This year, the contest accepted three- to five-minute shorts that took on one of three themes: Ski School, Shreddin’ While Sleddin’ and Super Heroes. “It’s just a really fun local kickoff, and every year it gets a little bit crazier,” she adds.

The ceremony is followed by a late-night screening of Light the Wick, the latest ski epic from Teton Gravity Research, at the Sundeck on top of Aspen Mountain. Tomorrow’s screenings at the Wheeler start at 5 p.m. and include Chris Davenport’s Australis: An Antarctic Ski Odyssey, Poor Boyz Productions’ Revolver, TransWorld Snowboarding’s In Color and Volcom’s 9191; tickets are $10 for two films. That’s followed by an after-party at Belly Up with DJ Muggs, along with showings of Eye Tripfrom Denver-based Level 1 Productions and director Stan Evans’s Say My Name. Tickets to the party are $25.

On Saturday at the Wheeler, you can catch TGR’s snowboard film Deeper, Standard Films’ The Storming, Matchstick Productions’ The Way I See It and Tyler Stableford’s documentary The Fall Line, about veteran Heath Calhoun’s journey from losing his legs in Iraq to competing at the Paralympics. Bone Thugs-N-Harmony will headline the final after-party at Belly Up, which also features screenings of Pirate Movie Productions’ Hooked and Forum Snowboards’ F’ It; tickets are $32. For a complete schedule, go to www.aspensnowmass.com/themeeting.

Sept. 23-25, 2010