Trip

PREMIERE / Odran Fernandez "JUST ON TIME"

Montpellier-based, Five-O Skateshop affiliate Odran Fernandez (who hasn't been without getting some LIVE love already before) and his Melbourne holiday are both looking real sweet, or so do they at least via the 3CCD prism of local filmer Hunter D. Micaleff we're inclined to believe is truthful, since Hunter's own holiday footage doesn't lie.

Now about Odran, in between two considerably long noseslide maneuvers, the man himself recounts:

"Melbourne is just an incredibly, crazy city packed with spots! So as far as the back story goes, the place has been quite lockdown-heavy since Covid and the last instance of lockdown we had spanned for just about three months. That whole time period, I was getting more or less 'paid to skate' due to being unable to work and so, I was being supported by an organization called Centrelink, benefitting from some weekly program... Which was pretty sick, actually!

And so during that lockdown, I first met Hunter; we randomly got a couple of clips together one day and the dynamic was just working, so we naturally went on and filmed more! "JUST ON TIME" was filmed over two months, two months and a half, so quite the dense, fast process - we really were productive because, well, we both had nothing else to do and that's a fact [laughs].

Really, big up to Hunter since, whenever we would be going skating, he really would be coming to film and not with that mindset of mostly skating and then maybe getting a few clips on the side. We'd meet up at spots with specific ideas... For instance, that whole session for both the first and last trick - I probably spent two hours at that spot that day, it really was one of my most intense battles I ever fought - and here he was the whole time, sitting down with the camera, switching tapes and batteries... Because yeah, we did choose to film with the VX!

"JUST ON TIME" as the video title actually comes from how one certain line was filmed just that, five seconds prior to the end of one of the tapes..." - Odran Fernandez

Greg Hunt / Interview

From professional for Stereo Skateboards, Jason Lee and Chris Pastras's company, in the late nineties to author of some of the most crucial skate videos of the past two decades - including the famous Dylan Rieder Gravis part (yes, this one), TransWorld videos such as "SIGHT UNSEEN" and various other cultural institutions ("THE DC VIDEO""MINDFIELD"...) - Greg Hunt's background is as atypical as it is rich and diverse. Now, if the arty aesthetics of the first Stereo videos - paired up with a special, and quite the impactful gift from Gabe Morford - encouraged him towards literal film work rather early on, his equally sincere interest in still photography persists, maybe, as more low-key celebrated than his legacy of technically moving pictures - in spite of quite the relentless activity, publishing-wise. As though to highlight the intrinsic importance of his subjects, presence and style throughout the years, "20TH CENTURY SUMMER", his new book, just dropped via Filmphotographic and features a selection of forty-one previously unreleased photos - all curated from some of the very first rolls of film Greg ever shot in his life; and what finer context for one's such experiments than a skate tour throughout the United States in the dead midst of summer 1995... Getting curious already? Well hopefully Greg himself will address all your possible questions - via this interview, below!

Malavega

The most resourceful of you might have seen the photos already in the latest print issue of, quite appropriately, Déjà Vu, but everyone else too has to know that the entire roster behind Parisian skateshop Vega (whose recent Malmö adventures we've presented recently, here, and who's currently collecting your used skate gear to send to Lebanon on location) recently visited Malaga for a wee bit. In order to see the pretty colors brought back as souvenirs via the corresponding photos by Clément Chouleur, one will have to look - or ask - for the mag in their local shop, but the moving pictures are now available online, under the form of this ten-minute edit by Léonard Berne and Marion Desquenne.

Eric's tip: "PULL UP"!

Barely surprisingly from such an indie video fiend, Eric Nguyen, the filmer behind the Select videos - amongst others - recently took it upon himself to get us in touch with Juan Reyna, a fellow filmmaker from Texas. From Laredo, more specifically - a city just bordering Mexico, and that's where Juan operates and runs quite the prolific YouTube channel from. But for the sake of "PULL UP", it is to N.Y.C. that he and his crew went, for some skate tourism that really doesn't look like such on footage as those eleven minutes of dynamic VX-1000 and savantly exposed Super 8 highlight a certain ease on the spots that suffices to make them blend in as locals. The immersion is real, the atmosphere so specific to the Big Apple is duly captured and rendered, and the creativity is also present, with the occasional nollie 540 flip out of nosewheelie - a trick Ron Knigge would have golf clapped for!

For some complementary content, please enjoy this photo gallery, a contribution by Rene Reyes.

Film Trucks / "INTO THE WILD SUNDAY"

"INTO THE WILD SUNDAY" is a yearly initiative by Jérémie Daclin - the longtime Lyon, France and worldwide activist, formerly via Cliché Skateboards and currently via Film Trucks (a brand already strong of quite the video output, always involving la crème de la crème of locals everywhere and on both ends of the camera, that is). A secret spot somewhere in the South of Lyon, a lengthy list of associates that isn't just for business calls and boom: there goes the recipe for an invite-only weekend treating a selection of the most active shops in their area with some chill vibes in the French countryside, also making for an opportunity to discuss around some solid skateboarding and sustainance as opposed to through the untangible frequencies of pseudo-connected technology.

Even though, last year, this event that's only really one on the human level (which just so happens to be the one that matters) couldn't take place due to some wet weather, this time it did occur, as this video recap by Vendôme O.G. Hugo Bernatas and photo gallery by renowned curve appreciator Loïc Benoit both testify.

And the shops who earned their rights to this summer weekend this time were the whole ABS Skateshop family (Lyon, Grenoble, Annecy), but also L'Appart Skateshop from Saint-Etienne and of course, Wall Street. Just as many operations that, to this day, remain crucial to their respective local scenes and are thus worthy of your support!

Vega in Malmö

What was an impossible scenario in Street Fighter II is now a thing: Vega in Malmö, thanks to the initiative of the eponymous Parisian skateshop whose crew followed their common star all the way up North to Malmö, the skate capital of Sweden if not all of Europe (and suddenly, the water under the bridge since "STRONGEST OF THE STRANGE" seems that much more enormous).
 
The video is by Léonard Berne featuring, as guest stars: himself, but also Samuel VromanGorka De France, Gabin Herman and last but not least, the homie Eric Mo.
 
François, of Vega, recounts...

 

A Studio in Lisbon

The Montreal-based brand Studio Skateboards recently set up a trip for the whole team to Lisbon, Portugal, which just so happened to painfully coincide with the timing of the closing of national borders in fear of the Covid-19 pandemic. We caught up with one of them in order to contextualize the video that did ensue: Andréa Dupré, who narrates...

"SUGUS" / ABS Annecy / PREMIERE

Part of the crew of the Annecy, France-based ABS Skateshop - Kevin DeschampsQuentin CaillatLudo MendezLilian Ceccon and Marc Leblanc - recently went on a skate holiday to Alicante, Spain, and made it back through the customs with "SUGUS": eight minutes of fake VX-1000 (we'll expand on that) and real skateboarding between homies, and productive ones at that seeing as the entirety of the edit was filmed over just a handful of days. The finished product is what LIVE is presenting to you today and Marc, its author, explains...

Far East Coast

Strush Wheels is a Japanese wheel company with a great video legacy ("COLLECTIVE IMPROVISATION" and "CITYSCAPE" have to belong inside your DVD player at some point), and its very specific art direction as this new edit "N.Y.C. 2019" can confirm again. Shinya Nohara aka. PORI and Shinsuke Haruta aka. HAL are the two main heads here, visiting New York City and catching up with Connor Kammerer; as a result, the world gets this two-minute gem reflecting some impactful, stylish and original skateboarding, comparably to the lens of an impeccable VX-1000 and supervising by Ryuchi Tanaka, that's only willing to shine for you.

Still hungry for more Strush Wheels? Please feel free to revisit "ON THE RUN"!

And last but not least - one can still sign the online petition to preserve the legendary Brooklyn Banks skate spot in N.Y.C., here.

"Gringo Diaries" / PREMIERE / Chris Komodromos / INTERVIEW

« GRINGO DIARIES » recently hit our inbox, courtesy of its London, England-based author Chris Komodromos and consisting in an eighteen-minute patchwork of VX-1000 clips that were rather obviously collected in quite the atypical settings, from absurd metal skateparks in the middle of the Costa Rican jungle to crazy D.I.Y. spots built in some local's backyard, if not literally inside their house. Those « GRINGO DIARIES » were obviously brimming with tales of human interaction, so quite naturally their history raised many a question that Chris turned out to be enthusiastic about answering - the resulting complementary book is available below!

"18$ 3 TIGERS" A Derby SG promo / PREMIERE / Thomas Courteille / INTERVIEW

Thomas CourteilleLIVE hasn't been without showcasing his works before, most notably for Balargue skateshop; today, it is from Singapore that he's reaching us, in the midst of the lockdown but still strong of the capacity to introduce us to Derby, a new France-based bearing company and also to the accompanying promo video: "18$ 3 TIGERS", summing up one story amongst many that the man himself was enthusiastic to share, as well as more anecdotes and perspectives, as you can now read just below!

"COUCH-VID 19" / Couch Raiders / PREMIERE

LIVE already introduced you to the Couch Raiders just the other day (via their full-length video: "CONNECTIONS") - so you might remember this crew from Poland, orchestrated by Polish filmer Booshek of Half A Brain, aka. Michał Buśko who's been living in Manchester for some years now. Despite such a move, the universal aspect of skateboarding still prevails over the arbitrary order of geography and, this time, it is in Barcelona that everyone caught up with everybody.

The resulting piece, brewed by Michał before the Big Lockdown: "COUCH-VID 19" is infectious with gritty VX-2100 vibes, and varied styles aplenty as many generations punctuate the timeline, comprising skaters from fifteen to forty-five years young.

The soundtrack is homemade, too, by Szwed Sed, big time hip-hop and rap producer in Poland and also a former skateboarder (if there's such a thing), who knows how to modulate the pace of his beats to the flow of the skater his creation is then tailor-fit for.

"It was a few months ago - before the virus - when my friends and I went on another trip to Barcelona; it's a tradition of ours to go there every year, to skate and forget about all the bad aspects of England and Poland, such as the bad weather.

Nearly everyone knows Barcelona is one of the best cities in Europe for skateboarding but, this time, we tried to explore the city in a different way than we normally do. We focused on skate spots that aren't near the city centre - we'd travel by train.

We were there for eight days and that's obviously not much time to stack a lot of clips.

We were very lucky to have our friends on board with us: Stu and Tommy, as our guides. They had been living in Barcelona for some time before the virus, so they knew more about the skate spots and places around than we did - this was a bonus for us. Stu still lives there to this day, and he's one of our connections from Manchester. We hope you're good, G!

Anyway, it was very interesting to see how many diverse age groups could participate on this trip - there were at least four generations of skateboarders present." - Michał Buśko

Pages

Live Skateboard MediaLive Skateboard Media

Wait to pass announcement...
Close