In Operation is a movie by PCP, a Helsinki-based crew of homies. The film features Jonathan Begley, Henri Kemiläinen, Joel Pircklen & Joakim Boldo
In Operation
In Operation ended up being a two-year project, which is in no part due to the Covid pandemic. The reason is simply that the first winter was so bad in Finland that we barely got any clips. Luckily for the project, the second winter gave us plenty of the good stuff in Helsinki and Southern Finland.
The first winter, our only clips came from a trip to the Swedish Lapland. Our two-man team consisting of Jonathan Begley and Joakim Boldo drove 13 hours north from Helsinki to get some clips while the other homies were stuck at work. This was right as the first news of Covid started popping up. During the following two weeks, we had one hell of a trip around mostly Kiruna and Gällivare, both mining towns. Those places are truly another world. They are so detached from everything else that everything seems a bit off in a way that is hard to explain. But most importantly, the snow was up to our balls, and there were spots to hit.
Aside from snowboarding, Kiruna and Gällivare are wild. We witnessed a bunch of drunken guys fly out of the side door of a van in front of us at some Kiruna traffic lights. The bunch had a drunken brawl for a couple minutes right in front of us until they all calmly packed into the van and continued their journey. Seemed like this was no big deal, and the other cars waiting at the lights didn't even bother honking their horns while the fight was blocking the road.
Just outside Gällivare there is an abandoned town called Malmberget (translates to ore mountain). The town has been abandoned due to the ground sinking from all the mining activity. Let me tell you, an entire abandoned town on a dark February night is creepy as hell. They lit up lights in random windows of buildings at night. This must be to make it look like it's not abandoned either to fend off vandalism or just to make it less creepy. At least for us, it made it even more creepy. Lights were on in buildings that had thick untouched snow in front of all the doors... One of the buildings was some kind of hospital that had a decent roof spot, but it required a lot of shovelling, so we went to prepare the spot the night before. After shovelling for a while, we saw car lights approaching the building, so we crouched down in the 1m snow on the roof. We glanced down carefully and saw three or four fire trucks and some other cars. We had no idea what was going on and whether we had maybe triggered some alarm, so in a panic, we decided to keep hiding on the roof. After all, there was nobody else there. We didn't want to risk getting in trouble with the authorities and getting a fine or worse. We saw from the windows that they were inside the building searching it while we were hiding on the roof. After about 30 long minutes we looked down and saw that nobody was at the vehicles, so we said screw it and decided to try and go to our car down the road and get the hell out. Surprisingly enough, nobody saw us come down and leave. We still have no idea what happened, but we ended up going back during the day and hitting the spot without issues. For all we know, most of that town is now demolished, so we were really happy to get a few clips from that place.
Stories from the Kiruna-Gällivare trip could fill up a couple pages, but I'll leave it at that for now. In the end, we got around 10 clips from the trip and drove back home to Helsinki. Those ended up being the only clips for the season, so we obviously continued filming for another year.
The second year was a real gift after the first. We got decent snow in Helsinki and Southern Finland, so we got to hit a lot of spots we had scouted over the years. Fewer wild stories came from the second year, but it ended up being a goddamn smooth winter hanging out with homies, travelling around Finland, having a great time and stacking clips. Making a snowboard film is truly the best excuse for getting on the road with friends and having a good time.
Hopefully you all enjoy the end product. The film features Joakim Boldo, Joel Pircklen, Henri Kemiläinen and Jonathan Begley. All the riders filmed it bro cam style. Additional filming by Marko Sinkkonen, Sebastian Kammonen, Jamie Durham and Aleksi Kemiläinen. 8mm by Marko Sinkkonen. Editing by Jonathan Begley.
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