On any given day you can find many kids (and kids at heart) skating in the Ballard skate bowl. Just last month there was a skateboarding showdown at the bowl. It’s obviously a popular sport and so are the movies about it, which got the wheels turning for a new film festival debuting in Seattle next weekend.
Just about a year ago, Ballardite Kirk Wimberley came up with the idea for The Skateboard Film Festival, appropriately named since it’s a festival dedicated to films about skateboarding. “Lately, skateboard films have become more than just a series of pros doing tricks – some people call those “trick-to-trick pornos,” Wimberley says. Last fall he hatched this idea with fellow skateboarder Eric Burgess and they began planning. “We created The Skateboard Film Festival to encourage networking within the skateboarding community and to create opportunities for filmmakers that wouldn’t otherwise exist.” The hope is that this festival will draw attention to up-and-coming film makers.
Forty films will be screened during next weekend’s inaugural festival ranging in length from two to 90 minutes. Films were submitted from around the world. “We were surprised by all the international submissions this first year. We did not expect to get so many,” Wimberley says, “And the French! The French filmmakers submitted the most films out of any country to the festival. We are amazed at their creativity, which made us want to hop the first flight out of the U.S. to skate the streets of Paris.” More information on the festival and ticket details can be found here.
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