Culture

Unless from under a rock or out of the loop, by now, the average curious skateboarder should spontaneously associate September with skate festival season via, in Croatia, the classic Vladimir Film Festival - now flaunting a brand new website, complete with the 2021 dates and program to also celebrate its supposedly tenth, really eleventh edition and, in Bulgaria, the more recent but just as motivationally driven Summit of the Non-Aligned, which LIVE has highlighted before - most notably here. Summit is taking place right now, this September 9-12th in Belgrade, followed by Vladimir this September 16-19th in Fažana and Pula.

So in order to efficiently echo this stream of great news, what's better than an exclusive recap of the previous edition of Vladimir - one that did take the hit of all the pandemic-related circumstances, but did happen in 2020 - from the perspective of the Amnesia Skateshop crew from Sliven, Bulgaria. To be accurate, the words are by Martin Dechev and Yavor Ski; the photos courtesy of Veliko Balabanov, already the author of this Deo Katunga edit for Stinky Socks and of the new Витошa Skateboards video, scheduled for screening at Vladimir this year; and as far as the accompanying moving pictures are concerned, then that is their former production for Amnesia that they already shot with the 2020 festival in mind.

Once again, feel free to do yourself a favor and keep in touch with the imminent frenzy of Vladimir here (and word on the streets is, their platform is bound to keep getting more and more interesting), and with the one of the Summit here. Feeling like an even deeper dive into the myth? You can also (re-)read our recap of Vladimir 2019, loaded with Josh Stewart artefacts but really cool surprises of many other kinds, here!

Thanks to SLAP message boards user Mad Max who generously took the initiative to go ahead and rip his own VHS copy, one of the most underrated S.F. skate videos of all time is now online for everyone to watch, in full for the first time - at least in a good while! "INFINITE MOMENTUM" was released back in 2000 by Supernaut Skateboards (which then, a couple of years later, delivered another classic: "URBAN CANVAS", also a must-watch). The roster, comprising Matt Pailes, Mike Daher (!), Matt Rodriguez and Tony Cox, amongst others, makes it well worth the 240p that any honest passionate skateboarder will spontaneously overlook anyway, given the importance of the footage and the quality soundtrack. As far as history goes, Supernaut was started in 1996 by Paul Sharpe (also featured in "INFINITE MOMENTUM"), Ted Newsome and Mike Ballard, who ended up handling the art direction before, alas not unlike many a great thing, the brand disbanded too soon.

The Felipe Oliveira case is one of the many LIVE has been closely watching for quite the years now; a post-modern style dictated by a persistently free spirit, dozens of more or less local appearances throughout the years, a constantly boiling Instagram feed and, from now on, the head of a project of his own: WorldXit, really the direct extension of his creativity and approach to daily life via original textile-based productions, but not just that. Indeed, right now, it is audiovisual matter Felipe is just about to drop, under the form of a new self-edited "web part" (as they say): "WORLDXIT PART 3", the receptacle of footage contributed by Converse Brazil camera maestro Guilherme Guimarães then reinterpreted by the skater himself, on LIVE as soon as tomorrow. To keep you waiting, in addition to reposting this other recent clip of Felipe, here are his answers to our questions that obviously raised themselves by themselves and he didn't sleep on as one more opportunity to express himself with enthusiasm - if not a certain urgency.

Now this update really should fall under the "D.J.'s tip" designation, as it's originally James "D.J." Davidson (whose works we've heavily featured before) who got us in touch with Jude Harrison, a young filmer from Kent, England, bringing to our attention the imminent completion of Jude's new full-length VX-1000 video: "IT'S A SONY". The first glimpses we got to catch immediately caught our interest as a high-quality piece of the author's local labor of love; although it does feature some London clips, in general, neither Jude nor his friends needed particularly fancy urban surroundings to achieve motivational greatness, instead making optimal use of their natural environment and putting in love that can be sensed as far as in Jude's meticulous camera settings and on-point maneuvring. And if that's not surprising enough levels of maturity for a sixteen-year-old to you, well, his answers to the few questions we went to ask him should do it, below! For a first LIVE feature, Jude's pick of a section from "IT'S A SONY" is the last segment, signed by local ripper and Globe shoes rider Jamie Manning - who also happens to be Jude's age and demonstrate a similar devouring passion for his own craft, on the other side of the lens. Welcome to year twenty twenty-one, "IT'S A SONY" and the Tunbridge Wells scene - all at once!