SkateBoat: Skateboarding through the third eye

Artykuł będzie w języku angielskim. Fanów polskojęzycznych odsyłamy do archiwum.http://skateboat.blogspot.com/2012/01/historia-deskorolki-projekt.html

Skateboarding through the third eye

Two days ago Haukur M.,the director of the documentary film Boat Town, and I visited the "Kontrkultura" program of the Polish National Radio 4 which is also video-streamed online. We talked about the SkateBoat project. It is a project that can get complicated from time to time. The radio speaker Magadalena Kasperowicz wanted to know everything - not just about the SkateBoat project but also about skateboarding in general.

But is it possible to tell everything in five minutes between commercials?

I was a little confused and nervous.

But I told what I know. I tried, I mean.

It was a chaotic mixture of:

SKATEBOAT - SKATEBOARDING - PROJECT - DOCUMENTARY FILM - ŁÓDŹ - WWW - BOAT TOWN - SKATEBOARD - HISTORY OF SKATEBOARDING - ŁÓDŹ - FIRST SKATEBOARD IN POLAND - SKATE - ŁÓDŹ - PASSION - AND MY DREAMS

At the beginning of the project I had another problem – is it possible to say anything true about skateboarding? Everything sounded banal to me. I remember Igor Kowalewski telling me when I first met him: Skateboarding changes lives. At the time I just smiled. It was not like I did not want to believe him, but the statement was too strong for me.

When is coming to skateboarding:

MEMORIES:

When I was four we moved to Copenhagen. Back there, everyone was skateboarding. Ramps were almost everywhere. I was hypnotized by watching skaters riding on ramps. I could just sit there and keep on watching and watching all day long. And then I asked my mum to buy me a skateboard. She did. During the show I said: We moved many times, and the skateboard got lost, but I am still hoping to find it to face my memories.

SKATEBOARDING

I know one thing about skateboarding for sure - skateboarding is not for everyone. Someone can say - that this actually does not mean anything or that you can say the same about everything else. I don't want to argue but I also know that you can fake everything else, you can fake a film, you can fake a story, you can fake a painting or a photograph but you cannot fake skating. It has to be done, the trick has to be clean, and then it is well done. The simplicity is always beautiful.

HISTORY OF SKATEBOARDING - THE PROJECT

The name of the project is SkateBoat. The project was born in the city of Łódź, and Łódź means Boat. Did you know that there is no river in the city called Boat?

Skateboarding in Łódź started at the end of the '80s, of the last century. It was the birth of skateboarding in Poland at the same time. Did you know that the first skateboard in Poland was most probably from Japan? The second skate-shop in Poland was opened in Łodź, but even before that … there was a man selling skateboards at his house and he was the one who brought the first skateboard from Japan. Just one, and then two, and four - and then it all started.

Yes, I made it up a little - for the sake of the story. I know that they were producing plastic skateboards in Poland in the 80s, but no one could really ride them. It was more like a toy for babies, so let's stay with my story...

The man was an engineer with a vision, and he changed a lot... He never skated himself, but he understood that the colorful skateboards can bring a little bit of happiness and freedom into gray, post-communistic reality of Poland.

The story begins, we are all on the Boat in the middle of a cross-cultural storm, and it is not a storm in a teacup.

DREAM

becoming true?

Sequence of... words, sounds, images, colors, shapes, emotions, actions, stories, and ideas in the mind of the one who can dream. There is no other way to express or shape all these differently than through various platforms. And it is not a new idea, not even contemporary, as we would like to think. Many thought that film as a medium is the best for story-telling and story-experience, because of its ability to synthesize arts. But more often we do feel that film is not enough either. And we also know that story-telling itself is an art and we all would like to participate in the process of story-telling.

Considering the above-mentioned fact and the utterly new situation, in which we have tools like no one had before, we cannot anymore deny that the concept of transmitters and receivers of the story is this same as it was. In other words, in the contemporary world we have to accept that the story-telling has to be provided through different media platforms and it has to be open for the active experience of trans-receiver.

Having this in mind, as well as the awareness of complexity of the history of skateboarding in Poland, or better to say - not only one history of skateboarding or one experience of skateboarding exists - the SkateBoat project is meant to be an opportunity for everyone who wants to participate in the process of creating and recreating the history of skateboarding in Poland. The opportunity means space for dreamers.

MORE THAN FILM

Everything started with an idea to shoot a documentary film. Documentary is the most open form of film-making. The script is basically a map, so a filmmaker has a feeling that he or she cannot get lost in the reality. But the map most often is misleading. In this situation the most important aspect is the talent and the intuition of the filmmaker and the trust he gained.

There is one more thing to be aware of, the good film story is always a film story, with its own internal rules. To be able to expand the space for story-telling and story-tellers, The SkateBoat project became more than it was thought to be at the beginning, more than a film...

Website with the virtual casting, interactive map of skate - spots

on-line virtual journey - the skateboat game

ON LINE APPLICATION, AUTHOR: ANITA KWATKOWSKA-NAQWI

and the film.

So the title is Boat Town and the story begins here ….

In 1989 a engineer named Ryszard Burakowski decided that Lodz needed something colorful and started to sell young kids skateboards. Little did he know that he would influence generations of young people who through skateboarding found a way to express themselves and bring back to life the post industrial city of Lodz. This film opens window into skateboarding then and now.

Haukur M. about the film Boat Town