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Focus: Skate This section of the festival program is a ticket to a destination you might not previously have considered visiting. Perhaps you just found it strange or pointless. Perhaps you wanted to, but you weren’t allowed to. Perhaps you spent some time there, but decided not to stay. If you are among the few who actually inhabit the place, this program will hopefully feel like coming home. The world of skateboarding is many things: art form, lifestyle, transportation, attitude, recreation, extreme sport, counterculture, fad. There is definitely some kind of a paradox here. On the one hand, skating is all about individualism and self-expression. Mastering the skateboard requires serious commitment, but there are no rules, just constant experimentation, exploring your own boundaries and pushing your own limits. On the other hand, skating is very much about community. About kids hanging out together, about staking out common territory. About teams. For many kids, this goes far beyond the skating ramps and pavements. It can lead to recognition for being good at something. It can add up to empowerment. Controlling the board can open up for controlling your own life. Skateboarding is of course all about style, which is exactly what makes it so exceptionally cinematic. This can also explain why it is so well documented. Since the 1970’s skaters have filmed and photographed each other, sharing the material on VHS and in fanzines, and these days, on the internet. Though the selection is modest in numbers – a mere six films – in content it is as immodest and ostentatious as skateboarding itself. It both documents and mythologizes nearly 40 years of contemporary history. We touch ground in California, the German Democratic Republic, and Afghanistan, showing how skating is inherently local and gloriously global. This is exciting, beautiful stuff. These films are all about the good guys in skating. Nothing about broken bones, little about broken lives. There are other stories, but we have chosen the inspirational, entertaining ones. Because you deserve it!
