As part of the Vermont Ski and Snowboard Museum’s Red Bench Speaker Series, enjoy an evening of storytelling, cinematography, and photography that ties together three generations of a Stowe family of filmmakers on Thursday, February 12, at 6:30 pm. Lew and Freedle Coty will reveal how skiing and snowboarding have influenced their creative lives, with footage and pictures that capture the daring feats and epic adventures of skiers and snowboarders near and far.
The story began with Vic Coty (1901–1987), a Princeton graduate who opted out of corporate life, moved to Stowe in the 1930s, and began filming skiers like Sepp Ruschp, Dick Durrance, and other well-known skiers of the time. He predated Warren Miller as a filmmaker. For more than 45 years, Vic showed his adventure movies at Stowe’s Akeley Memorial Auditorium, where he narrated scenes of bikini skiing on Mt. Mansfield’s Nosedive, dropping into Corbet’s Couloir in Jackson Hole, powder skiing in the Rockies, hang gliding, grass skiing, and whitewater kayaking. Clips of Vic’s films will be shown.
Vic’s son, Lew Coty, 73, was born and raised in Stowe and started hitchhiking to the mountain to ski at a very young age. He and his sister, Ann, helped their father produce his ski films through the 1960s and 1980s, both in front of and behind the camera lens. Lew gravitated to photography and, to this day, takes his camera with him skiing. He has a passion for exploration, mountain route-finding, and backcountry skiing, and knows Stowe’s backcountry like the back of his glove. He has the eye of a naturalist, and the photos that will be shown capture nature’s beauty. He and his wife, Audrey, have been maple sugaring in Nebraska Valley for close to 50 years.
The youngest generation of Coty filmmakers is Freedle, 41, who was also born and raised in Stowe. He has been a director, cinematographer, and editor at Denver-based Level 1 Productions since 2003. Freedle has traveled to locales around the snow-covered globe, including Switzerland, British Columbia, Sweden, Alaska, and Japan. During this tenure, Level 1 received the coveted Powder Magazine “Movie of the Year” award twice for the films Sunny (2012) and Pleasure (2016). His most recent output was a collaboration with professional skier Parker White on the Nothing film trilogy. Freedle is a snowboarder who also happens to ski and is currently involved with his family’s maple sugaring operation at Nebraska Knoll. Most recently, he can be found shooting snowboarders deep in Mt. Mansfield’s powdery woods.
David Goodman, renowned New York Times writer and author of national award-winning backcountry ski guidebooks, will moderate the event, which will end with a Q&A session.
Event Admission is $10. Capacity limited. Please purchase your tickets in advance.
Doors to the Museum at 1 South Main Street, Stowe, open at 6:00 PM, and guests are invited to explore the exhibits and socialize. The discussion begins at 6:30 PM. Your admission helps support the Museum's mission to “collect, preserve, and celebrate Vermont's rich skiing and snowboarding history.”
Thank you Red Bench Speaker Series sponsors, Spruce Peak, rk Miles, and Sisler Builders.
