4bi9 Media present us their second full-feature film “Slamina!” Earlier this year it picked up the best AM film and best AM rider performance at IF3. It also came runners-up in various other Amateur awards. At 45 minutes long, this medium-length film, which boasts the likes of Tom Wallisch and Henrik Harlaut, definitely shows some promise.

The introduction is almost heavenly in the way it's depicted; it shows a substantial amount of jibbing, urban and park. Giving us a taste of what this film is. A 'newschool' ski film. Now, admittedly, I prefer the big-mountain ski films so can Slamina! win me over?

It first starts off with Brady Perron's segment which is mostly rails and then moves on to some, unfortunately, ordinary jibbing scenes. Nonetheless, this segment is very creative because Perron manages to incorporate houses, generators, a skate bowl into his tricks and it's refreshing to see an original way of doing tricks rather than just making a perfectly groomed jump. Despite the majority of urban and jibbing there is a small portion of backcountry skiing but it just seems very out of place with the rest of the segment.

The next two rider segments cover it all, from night-time rail sessions, to throwing 7s off the park, to backcountry skiing. Although the park is fairly good, the backcountry is definitely lacking somewhat and some of the lines are somewhat sketchy. Nonetheless, this will still get you stoked.

Later on, various other rider segments include everything you could imagine, wall-rides, backflips, double-backflips, 270s, and so on. It then gets followed on by a long serious of short rider segments which are pretty disappointing, because the segment is so short and at times you are left wanting to see more of these riders.

The main segment for me was Henrik Harlaut's where he throws everything from 7s to 9s to corks. His park section was probably the best out of the whole film. The film finally ends with some funny, not so serious credits, and you kind of feel sad that they didn't take this approach throughout the film.

The structure of the film is tedious and in the end just makes you want the film to end. The fact that every rider has it's own segment takes away from the potential creativity. It makes it so standardized and means you know what's coming up next. For an amateur film, the picture quality is perfect, and the cinematography is of a pretty high standard for an AM film. Soundtrack wise, it's a bit varied. Overall it tends to be mediocre. Mediocre, the one way I would describe this film. And, sadly, Slamina! did not win me over.