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
To learn more join us:
Dream becomes
real when the passion becomes way of life.
Róża Misztela
Co-author and co-producer of SkateBoat
