South Asian Skiing Film Festival

Highlight the skiing exploration by South Asian athletes

Background Information

Anjali Mishra grew up in Hershey, PA and has been skiing since she was seven years old. She took lessons every weekend at her local mountain, and started alpine racing when she was in eighth grade. However, any mountain she went to on the east coast or west coast, Anjali felt there was an extreme lack of diversity of south asians on the mountains. She wanted to create something to highlight the south asian skiers that there are in this world, but also to do something to try and create more diversity on the ski slopes. So, Anjali decided to create a film festival of only showing south asians skiing. She found different films of south asians skiing in Kashmir, documentaries, news videos of Indian Alpine Olympist: Arif Khan, and more. Anjali took these clips and edited them together to make one giant film.

Implementation of Project

Anjali is going to display her film at her town’s India Day. India Day in her town is a festival to display the beauty of Indian culture. There is food, dancing, artwork, clothing, and much more. There are usually over ten thousand people attending, and Anjali saw this as the best opportunity to connect her Indian community with her film. She will get a booth at India Day, and display her film for people to watch. Anjali is also going to bring her coaches along as well for people to come talk at her booth with.

Results of Project

While she has not shown her film yet, Anjali hopes her Indian community has a bright response to her film. She hopes to have many people come watch at least a portion of her film, and talk to her and her coaches about skiing. With many passionate people on the inside of the booth, Anjali wants that passion to be shared with people standing outside the booth. Her end goal is to inform her Indian community about the world of Indian skiers, and is hopeful to have some individuals think about starting skiing.

What’s Next

Anjali plans to continue on trying to create more diversity on the ski slopes among south asians. She is excited to take her leadership skills she learned at the Alzar School and apply them when she attends college next year. As she grows older, Anjali wants to bring more Indians in the world of adventure sports.