The War on Style – Featuring Hank Bilous. Full Film

Mountainwatch | Video

After competing on the Freeride World Tour, and transitioning into a new career in nursing, Hank Bilous, one of New Zealand’s strongest freeskiers, brings us The War on Style, an exposé into the relationship between different passions, the skill sets behind them, and the self-expression that mastery of them allows.

The film sees Hank to add another qualification to his quiver: skier, surfer, writer, nurse – now director and producer.  The War on Style opens the lid on Bilous’ creative mind and picked up the Jury’s Pick Award at the iF3 Film Festival.

Written, directed and performed by Hank Bilous

Filmed and edited by Chris Maunsell

Original songs and score by Sam Wave

Hank Bilous talks about the War on Style:

What stage were you at in your life that allowed for the space for this creative expression? 

I think there is always space for creative expression because every decision we make is a creative choice. This reality becomes less obvious to us as we grow up. We are taught to think within certain frameworks because shared ways of thinking help our society spin. These frameworks slowly indoctrinate us into the confines of conformity and the creative choice appears to become out of reach. We reserve those creative choices for so called artists and we forget that we learned our limitations. When we are kids we haven’t learnt all that stuff yet and we are free to call a stick a snake or money, just an idea. Creative expression continues to have space in my life because I constantly remind myself that a stick can be a snake if I want and money really is just a silly little idea.

How do you hope The War on Style will affect people? How do you think people leaving the theatre will feel? 

By walking the viewer though the different aspects of my big-little life from surfing to nursing, I want them to see that concepts I am talking about in the film can be applied universally. The film is not about skiing and it is not about surfing either. It is really about the idea that any technical skill gives you the opportunity to express yourself and that self-expression part really is worth striving for. I hope the audience can apply that concept to their own life. The more creatively someone can apply that concept to their life the better in my eyes. How good would it be if nana saw the film and started flaring out a bit more with the knitting needles?!

Has writing always been a creative outlet for you? 

No! Quite the opposite actually. I really struggled with reading and writing in school, something to do with not conforming to the rules if I remember right. That early school experience left a lasting impression and avoided it like the plague. I read my first book for pleasure in my first year of nursing school in 2019 and began writing recreationally a couple years later. Although it was a frosty start, just like any technical skill all it takes is serving your apprenticeship in time and repetition then you will eventually figure it out. Once I got over the initial technical hump, I started to really enjoy it as a tool for self-expression.

Have you felt restricted by the limitations of competition when it comes to skiing? 

Absolutely. However, I think some of the limitations forced upon you by competitive skiing are what make it so interesting to me. It is not often that the best skier in the field wins the competition. There are a variety of limitations that the whole field is contending with terrain, snowpack, weather, event origination and so on. Then there is a variety of limitations each rider personally faces from headspace to having the flu. The real competition is with each rider against these limitations and every riders opponent will look different. The sooner you realise that we are all playing different games on the same field, the better.

Where will your ski evolution go in the future? 

Having a degree of mastery of a technical skill starts shifts the sport from a physical exercise to a mental one. As a technical skill, there is of course more technical aspects within skiing to learn but they are far less interesting to me these days. I am much more excited about using skiing as a vehicle to express myself. Your personal expression comes from deep within the core of your being and is informed by your unique influence stew that is bubbling away down there. I see my evolution as a skier being driven by that influence stew that is constantly evolving with each new inspiring ingredient that is added. It is more of a ground-up way of approaching progression than the top-down structure of traditional goal setting. To continually add to that stew in new and diverse ways by keeping my mind open and my influences broad is how I plan to drive my evolution as a skier and as a person.

What new skills do you hope to pick up yourself? 

I think the biggest thing I want to keep learning is new skills themselves. It is such a fun and free time in the beginning of a learning journey. You don’t know all the rules yet and there is less in the way of your creativity. Also, the learning curve is steep so it keeps it exciting. To learn something new on skis these days is often quite dangerous and I don’t want to expose myself to that level of risk that often. The feeling of learning something new is the same feeling of warm satisfaction no matter where along scale of mastery you are in that particular discipline so why not be at the beginning where the feelings of learning something new are abundant. The new skill I tried my hand at a few days ago was welding and the next I am keen to try is sewing. The more different things you can try the more obvious the connection between them become too. Welding and sewing are kind of just different ends of the same stick.

What impact has this project had on your own life?

Well, the proof has been in the pudding. It has been a real test of the concepts explored in the film in my life personally. Writing a script, co-producing and directing were all new skills to me before we started this project. We also weaved in things that I am on the further down my learning journey like skiing and everything in between. That is a part of why this project has been so fulfilling to me personally, as it has required so many different parts of me to do.

The other piece of the project puzzle is getting to work alongside my wingmen Chris & Sam. Those guys are frickin legends and working on this project has really solidified the idea for me that collaboration is much better than competition.