On the endless scale of underrepresented scenes, the one of Angoulême, France ranks pretty high, thereby justifying just as much more attention whenever it does raise its voice. That's why it especially caught ours, strong of its half an hour of skateboarding filmed on location, and also making for the opportunity to catch up with its author Victor Chassel for a well-deserved recap of the regional skate activity altogether:
"'LA DOSE' is a video filmed over the course of five months around Angoulême, with the goal to skate as many spots as possible. The project was supported by Pop-Out Skateshop, Plus Skateboards and our collective Steez.
It really is your basic homie project, with no pressure whatsoever - originally, the intent was to make a joined clip with my friend Alexis Dupuy and I, but the scope quickly grew bigger than that.
The idea also became to gift the local scene with, finally, another legit skate video as it had been ten years since the last local full-length production.
I remember first starting skating in Angoulême and, like any little kid would have been, being impressed by all the local kings of the era at skatepark du Gond - names such as Teddy Robert, Melvin Tisseuil, Musko Arnoud, Rémi Paquereau or Florent Lavocat especially being worth a mention.
They all used to skate for our former skateshop: Woodies ; and then one day, their full-length video dropped and it instantly became a reference for our whole generation.
Ten years later, the scene has changed a lot: new talents have emerged, new kids have picked up the torch. Which had to be documented too!
Everything just fell into place for this video; I had bought myself a decent camera, finally, everyone was pumped to skate and then, paradoxically, the recent succession of national lockdowns actually resulted in more freedom for us to do our thing.
When I took on filming duties, I really wasn't expecting to be in for a twenty-nine-minute long project. At the end of the day, I'm satisfied with the results and glad I could film me and my friends' first parts. Obviously, the biggest accomplishment is gifting the Angoulême skaters with a new local video representing everyone. It's been nearly two months since it dropped, now; for a lot of people here, it's been on heavy rotation, and so here's to hoping even more folks will enjoy it!" - Victor Chassel
And as soon as the first suggestion of historic local videos to possibly recommend, Victor hooked us up:
"- Here's the classic "WOODMOVIE" full-length video by Nico Malet for the (late-) Woodies shops of Angoulême and Limoges - a true local gem!
- Also back in the day, Teddy Mongin was making shorter clips for the shop; in the end, that's ten installments in a series I used to binge watch, which you can find on Teddy's Vimeo channel;
- A solid Teddy Robert part;
- Here, an ancient shop promo;
- There, a clip of some city and skatepark footage by Pierre-Henri Terrade;
- A more recent promo video of the Pop-Out Skateshop team;
- And finally, to go way, way back: the "SIXTEEN" trilogy from the nineties, caught in between the peak of Hi-8 and the emergence of the Mini-DV format!
And then there still is way, way more, but those should suffice for now!"
