Khyll Siarot – Smokey
Levels of crust that make old London estates look like MACBA, a flick so powerful it, at times, produces the ever-elusive front foot catch (à la Cyrus), and a general aura of raw, untamable energy unlike anything we’ve seen before – this Filipino banger has all the ingredients to get you hyped for the miraculously somewhat dry week ahead (in the UK at least).
Knowing very little about Khyll Siarot and the scene in the Philippines, we asked Daryl Dominguez to fill us in: “Smokey is 18 and comes from a very low-income family about 2 hours out of Cebu City, the city in which the large majority of this part is filmed. He will usually hitchhike into the city on the back of construction vehicles to go skating.
Cebu, although not the capital city, is widely regarded as the skateboarding capital of the Philippines. The scene in Cebu is thriving, but without too much in the way of infrastructure, making access to goods very difficult (but otherwise unaffordable for most). Opportunities for Filipinos to pursue some form of career in skateboarding are nonexistent, with the only real exceptions being Margeliyn Didal and Motic Panugalinog.”
Shoutout to Daryl, Anthony Claravall and the rest of the Push Philippines gang for their continued efforts to bridge the gap of accessibility to skateboarding for communities in the Philippines, and for putting us on to incredible skateboarders like Khyll in the process.
Filmed by Budmedia’s Caryl Tello.
