Retta Skateshop – Atemporal
Often one of the best things about rewatching old skate shop videos is how defining they are of their times. Think FTC’s Penal Code, or in Europe the Fifty-Fifty videos, Slam City’s Skate Rats Promo and Nozbone’s Rendez Vous… They’re all incredible windows into very specific era’s of skating and what people were listening to and wearing in certain scenes back then, with even the trick selections and filming/editing styles at times reflecting this.
Now maybe it’s because it’s just come out (as opposed to us looking back at it in a few years), maybe it’s because it was filmed over 6 years but Pedro Biagio‘s 25-minute masterpiece for Retta Skateshop feels like it purposefully blurs the lines of space and time to the point where it absolutely does not do that. But somehow in a good way. It’s this mix of it being filmed on a camera that stopped being produced 20 years ago but with advanced Gustav Tønnesen/Quentin Guthrie style techniques. It’s the fact that you get to witness Leonardo Adrian and Thiago Neves grow from the tiniest little shrimps to fully grown unbelievable skateboarders in the space of a part, or even how the style of skating it features is so deeply rooted in traditional plaza skating, drawing inspiration from our favorite Brazilian icons, whilst being very of its time (if not futuristic) in terms of their actually abilities… One minute you’re at the previous incarnation of Vale, the next you’re watching Wilton frog leap up then nollie back heel down three ginormous blocks, and in a bloody Zero board! You’re constantly going from asking yourself how ‘have I never heard of this person?!’ (see Kayna Abel) to recognising OGs (Rodrigo Petersen still has the best push in the game). Then early nineties’ style shuvit late flips are thrown in there alongside all sorts of extremely modern tech, and the result of all this is that it truly does feel like you’re watching something ‘Atemporal’! 10/10
Starring Wilton Souza, Leonardo Adrian, Thiago Neves, Gustavo Felipe, Kayna Abel, Roberto Moreira, Rafael Gomes and Pedro Biagio.
Filmed and edited by Pedro Biagio.
