FREE: A Decade Later, The 16mm Film Is Online
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In 2016, a bit before “van-life” became a hashtag and before every backcountry mission came packed with drone shots and GPS overlays, three riders released a film that had something much rarer: proper freedom.
This DIY analog snowboard film was shot by Wyatt Stasinos, Cory Stasinos, and Nick Russell over four years. They brought 16mm and Super 8 cameras everywhere, funding the project with whatever money they could come across. No sponsors paid the bill, no schedule directed their days, and no safety net waited if things went wrong. They just traded turns behind the lens, hiked until dark, and lived out of trailhead campsites.
For the first time, the full project is now live on YouTube.
A Film Made on the Unknown Road
The idea was simple: wander around, ride, explore. Along the way, FREE turned into something completely different; a diary of youth lived off the grid, before smartphones turned every moment into shareable content.
Shots were missed. Film got burned. Rain soaked their tents, car seats doubled as beds, and foreign mountain ranges became home without guidebooks or phones. From the Lower 48 to Alaska, Japan, Thailand, Chile, and Argentina, the crew chased snow and sunlight, and sometimes just the feeling of not knowing what came next.
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Why It Still Matters
Almost ten years later, FREE feels strangely modern in how completely it rejects modernity. In a time when “freedom” often begins by turning to airplane mode, this film reminds us what disappearing actually looked like.
Nothing is sugarcoated. The trio documented life as it happened; not as they hoped it would look in the edit. Rough edges carry the film. Blown exposures and shaky Super 8 shots serve as fingerprints of a moment in time that can’t be copied.
A Return Worth Watching
The riders behind the film have since taken completely different paths, mostly shaped by this very project. Its rerelease isn’t a nostalgia trip; it’s a reminder of what moved them.
For Russell and the Stasinos brothers, FREE wasn’t just a mission; it became a launching point, a map drawn in reverse. Watching it today offers a rare chance to revisit a style of filmmaking (and living) that’s slowly disappearing.
