Transiberian trip memories

Several month has passed since Matteo Maggi, Andrea Schilirò and the rest of the coldfocus crew returned home from their culturail trip called Transiberian; many things changed, snow melted again, temperatures risen up dramatically but memories are something indelible, so right after the publishing of the new teaser Transmities, we’re asking Matteo about his amazing experience.

Hello Matteo, how’s goin’?
All ok, and you?

What are you doin’ right now?
Right now I’m at the office, then as I reach home I lock myself up in the editing room ’til my eyes drop.

Which is the brightest remembrance of the Transiberian Trip?
Probably the strong blue tones of frozen Baikal lake and more generally all the colors that filled our eyes and hearts during the whole trip…

Reading something about the transiberian I can assume it is not to be the kind of route where it’s easy to meet people with snowboards under their arms, so I’m tryin to figure out the average transiberian commuter reaction when hitting you and your crew packed with board bags and video equipment…but then also tell me “who is the average transiberian commuter?”
First of all it’s proper to explain that we took an “alternative” route to the classic Transiberian, that starts in Moskow and goes ’till Vladivostok o Pechin; we took the train in Helsinki through S. Petersburg, so the passengers were quite astonished when met us, ’cause it was the less turistic course; 90% of them probably had never seen a snowboarder or even a foreigner before: for three weeks we really never got through a foreigner or a tourist. The average Transiberian passenger includes such a big range: the train is the most economic way to travel and Siberia is so huge that we saw people spend more than 48 hours on the train: we knew guys from Ekaterinburg who were gettin’ back after a weekend in S. Petersburg, or people who were moving from the countryside to reach family or friends..

You travelled not only through different countries but also through different continents: did you find deep cultural swithces and if it’s like that which are the main one?
Both the borders we crossed meant real big cultural switches, first from Finland to Russia and then from Russia to China: three completely different worlds. Our trip started in Europe and finished in China but the most of the time we travelled through Siberia; I can say that the more we got deep in the Siberian territories, the more we faced excessively cold temperatures but also the more we met really cool hearted people..all the time, from Etakerinburg to Irkutsk.

Now let’s talk about the riding aspect: I think being not able to make a preventive inspection, all the spots so the shootings were spotted and arranged at the moment..so what can you say about it?
I would never expected to film and brang home so much material like I did. But we’re into this kind of riding since the beginnin’ so like in the last seasons we got some 30 minutes sessions with amazing results and 5 hours shooting with  -30 C° with nothing real done.

The best and the worst spot, the easiest and the hardest one..and why of course.
One of the best spots surely was at Ekaterinburg, a kinkrail with the landing close to a river shore. To get the right speed guys needed to slide another rail before, only two meters from the roll in: beautiful lights and atmosphere, nasty tricks from everyone, 4 hours of session with -28 C°. The most easy-nice combo was surely a bomb-drop by Naku shooted at sunset on Baikal lake. 3 minutes for an awesome picture.
The hardest one could be a kink rail in a town called Divnogorsk close to Krasnoyarsk, 4 hours to get almost nothing, but it was real hard..

Another basic thing in this kind of long trips are the travel buddies. You know each other pretty good but I bet it is quite different when you live togheter for such a long time…
This one was probably our biggest luck; we knew each other real good since a long time and never got problems during the entire trip, maybe sometime tiredness was a dangerous player..Problems pop out when you’re not having fun but we lived a so intense experience that neither the cold nor the precarious situations we faced were able to tear the constant grin on our faces.

And now? Beside a strong volume of amazing memories and experiences, you realized something that’s not only snowboard trip or a cultural documentary: it is a real kick in the ass of this lethargic snowboard culture that seem to be missing of thickness and counsciouness..
I lived the best experience of my life and I’m really happy of having 5/6 month of work before, because every time It will be like getting on that train again..
I don’t think we made nothing radical, but growing up perspectives and interests changes and although I still love snowboard videos, I needed to do something different.

And professional talking, did you had contacts or signed to get your work published somewhere?
We’re workin’ on it, we got some contacts from European and US networks but nothing sure at the moment; hope to know something more in a couple months..

Fresh ideas for the next coldfocus project or are you still buried in the Transiberian duties?
Buried!