A skate documentary can teach you more about the sport and its participants. It can inspire, entertain, and inform. It's also a great way of killing a couple of hours! Take a look at the list below to see some of our personal favorite skateboard films.
Skateboard Kings depicts several top skaters during the 1970s, giving you some insight into the early years of skateboarding and featuring future superstars such as Stacy Peralta, Ray Flores, and Tony Alva. Skateboard Kings is available on YouTube, where you can watch the full hour-long episode for free.
Blind Video Days had a huge impact on the skateboarding community and inspired many teenagers to take up the sport.
Blind Video Days is less than 24-minutes long , but the Spike Jonze skate video is iconic. It is a perfect snapshot of skateboarding culture and it's captured by the man who would later direct a host of popular music videos and documentaries, as well as the brilliant Being John Malkovich.
If you want to see more of Tony Hawk, from his days as a young skater to when he had established himself as a legend, take a look at Tic Tac 2 Heelflip, the Bones Brigade Video Show, The Contest, OP King of Skate, and Rodney Mullen: From the Ground Up , as well as the Hollywood films Thrasin' and Gleaming the Cube.
It was released back in 1966 and while it lasted for just 15 minutes, it had a massive impact on the sport and is still remembered fondly to this day.
Skateboard Kings is one of the oldest skateboarding films on this list, as it dates back to 1978.
In August 2016, it was announced that skateboarding would officially become an Olympic sport at the Tokyo Summer Games in 2020. The news led to fierce debates between the skateboarding community, arguing on whether this was the right direction for the scene. A newly released film, entitled BOARDERS, focuses on this debate and the “controversial moment in time for the sport where the growing commercial expectations meet the rule-breaking ethos of skateboarding”. Using the backdrop of the GB Olympic Skateboarding team including Sam Beckett, Alex Hallford, Jordan Thackeray and Alex Decunha, the film examines the scenes history, challenges and its current status in society. Skateism caught up with directors Annika Ranin and Sean Fee to discuss the movie ahead of its release.
SF – Trying to plan and coordinate with multiple skaters is a challenge in itself, add a global pandemic and you have a decent obstacle to overcome as a film production. The narrative had to be reworked around all of the unforeseen events which came up.
AR – Historically skateboarding has been at times associated with antisocial behaviour. There just seems to be something about a group of young men in hoodies that scares people. However, that is definitely changing as skateboarding becomes more mainstream. Another key misconception is just the idea of what cities are supposed to be and who should be able to use them. If we are only allowed to walk and tap our cards to buy things, then that is a very narrow idea of an urban liveable environment. After all, street skateboarding is all about using a city in a creative way for the purpose of play, and I don’t think that in itself should be considered as radical as it often is. Especially coming out of Covid, we just saw what empty cities look like and I don’t think anyone can say that they prefer that.
AR – As skateboarding as an industry grows and as a sport gets more athletic there is definitely a need for better support, both physical in terms of how to deal with and avoid injuries but also mental in the sense that if you are a professional skateboarder and when you are injured it is a whole different ball game to say, a footballer getting injured. There are different financial implications as well if you are forced to be off your board for 6 months, let alone social implications if your social circles tend to focus around skateboarding. We actually dig into this aspect quite a bit in the film and I think we have seen a shift already in the way sponsors approach this.
The director of ‘Minding the Gap’ discusses growing up with a violent stepfather and how he and his fellow skaters learned to cope with toxic male figures
But Minding the Gap isn’t just a study of crippled masculinity. Liu presents us with a world of abused women — including his own mother — so that we observe in intimate detail what the effects are of prolonged mistreatment. This is a terribly sad film, but its power comes from Liu’s unadorned portrayal of these difficult lives — and his willingness to be a chronicler of domestic violence’s aftershocks.
They are also restrictive in how you can skate it because airs or lip tricks are out of the question. These are the reasons they are uncommon. It’s just not an economical use of material and space and skate parks have size and budget restrictions.
The bowl can be as shallow as 5-7 feet or as deep as 15-20 feet deep. They are often made of concrete for outdoor parks and sometimes wood for indoor parks. Dropping in and carving these are immensely fun and are the ideal way to skate for older skaters because there isn’t much stress on your body.
Usually, a street-style park will feature a stair set or two. Most likely one 3-stair set and one 5-stair set. There also might be a down rail alongside the stairs to grind.
A ledge is an elongated block with metal capped edges that are meant to be grinded. These are commonly found in the skatepark and are often incorporated into other skate obstacles. Ledges are also very common to find in the city in street spots.
Honestly, the difference in the level of difficulty between flat rails and round rails isn’t so big. While kinked rails definitely are harder, round or flat ra ils are pretty similar to skate.
Skate parks will also often have a moveable kicker that you can position in whatever way you want and people can get quite creative. If you own any skate obstacle, you probably own a kicker or a grind rail.
Rails come in a lot of different varieties and shapes. All the rails in skateparks will be skateable, but not so much in street spots. Rails can be on platforms, along with stair sets, and simply stand-alone obstacles. The rails themselves can be round or flat and kinked or straight.