据我所知这应该是到目前为止唯一的滑板电影节了吧，UnderSkatement今年进入了第四个年头，今天（12月1日）在洛杉矶的Victoria剧院拉开了序幕，今年共有24部影片前来参展。但前来参展的影片并不一定都是滑板的电影，用电影节发起者Andreas Trolf说：“前来参展的影片的重点是所有影片的制作者们必须是skater，就像伟大的职业滑手Julia Stranger说的，这与在大台阶上发生了什么没有关系，却与除此以外你的生活中发生的一切使你变成为一名skateboarder的事情有关。”
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Underskatement Vol. 4 - San Francisco's only skateboard film festival - rolls into the Victoria Theatre on Saturday with a screening of about 24 short films shredded down and blended into about a two-hour program and afterparty.
But just because Underskatement is a skateboard film festival doesn't necessarily mean all the films are about skateboarding. That would be too easy for a subculture like skaters, who are known for celebrating trickery and breaking rules with style.
"The emphasis of an Underskatement film is on the fact the filmmaker is a skateboarder," said Andreas Trolf, who runs the festival with his roommate David Franklin. "As the great pro skater Julian Stranger once said, 'It's not about what happens between the top of the stairs and the bottom, it's everything else in your life that makes you a skateboarder.' "
For this festival, Trolf, 31, and Franklin, 36, received about 75 submissions from as far away as South America, Europe and Australia. The works include documentary, experimental, animation and music videos shot on 16 mm, Super 8 and digital cameras. Besides the filmmaker being a skateboarder, the only other criteria was to keep the submissions under seven minutes long.
Invariably, some made the mistake of sending in random footage of their friends showboating at the local skatepark. But the works that made the Underskatement cut tended to follow the spirit of old school '70s and '80s skateboard films from pioneers like Neil Blender.
"Rather than seeing amazing tricks, I like to see art in the filmmaking," said Franklin, who in 2001 premiered the first Underskatement festival at a packed warehouse on Bryant Street. "For example, with the old GNS and Alien Workshop videos, there was always great scenery and segues of random road trips, shots of seagulls, old churches and stuff. It's all about the way the film includes the environment with the skateboarder and the city or country they're in."
Volume 4 highlights include Rory Sheridan's "Behind the Griptape: Bobby Worrest," an eight-minute mockumentary of a skateboarder's life with a faux VH1 "Behind the Music," focus to it.
Bay Area video editor and producer (and of course, skateboarder) Dan Wolfe submitted "Lost in the Fog," a music video for San Francisco band Jet Black Crayon.
"It's kind of a silly story about a bike getting stolen twice as each member of the band take it from each other," said Wolfe. "There's a lot of San Francisco scenery and at least one shot on a skateboard."
One of the stars in "Lost in the Fog" is skater/Jet Black Crayon band member Tommy Guerrero, who with the footage of his days as a Bones Brigade and Powell Peralta skateboarder in the '80s, has become like the Al Pacino or Robert De Niro of skateboarding films.
The format of the one-day festival in some ways mimics a typical day at the skatepark, in that all films and videos are blended into one program, with each director/skater showing his or her latest stunts followed by the next. The two-hour program will have a quick intermission halfway through and a party to follow at Cafe Du Nord with performances by skate-rock bands Hightower and Thee Oh Sees.
Adidas has stepped in this year to help finance Underskatement, which Trolf and Franklin have always run with the goal of just breaking even. With the help of Adidas the two will take the festival on tour across the country and to Australia and Europe, "finally without having to worry about not being able to pay our rent," said Trolf.
"The kind of people who show up to the festival aren't all necessarily skaters, which we like. They come to see unique filmmaking," said Trolf. He also believes that as skateboarding nostalgia is slowly making its way into the mainstream (thanks in part to films like "Dogtown and Z-Boys" and Helen Stickler's "Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator"), it often lures skaters to come out of retirement.
But that doesn't mean that skateboarding is no longer a crime.
"Just yesterday I was pulled over by the police on Divisadero," said Franklin. "Inherently, skateboarders and the police don't get along. That's OK with me. I don't want to get along with the police. I don't agree with skateboarding having a whitewashed image. For me, skateboarding is a place for people to go when they don't fit in anywhere else."
Underskatement Vol. 4 premieres Saturday at 7:30 p.m. Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th St., S.F. Tickets are $7 (price includes admission to afterparty at Cafe Du Nord). www.underskatement.com.
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