PLEASE NO CRUST
It takes a very special kind of passionate nutter to film an independent full-length; that goes without saying. But this project… It’s like a whole new level of selfless “for the culture” behaviour that frankly we’d not come across in our 11 years of running this magazine.
Andréa Dupré is a filmer from Bordeaux (and an incredible skater in his own right), who, after falling in love with South Africa and its skateboarders on holiday last year, decided to put all the money he’d saved up working as a gardener into going back to visit the choms, and bringing to life a project that would follow in the footsteps of Ryder Nel’s Chakalakka. We’re talking a video that would both capture the spirit of the scene and the energy needed on the sessions to keep turning gravel into gold day in day out, but also, that would, in a very straightforward, big titles/full parts kind of way, give the key players their opportunity to shine. And boy did they shine! It’s the perfect mix of traditional bangers, with fat switch 360 flip hucks and all kinds of mental rail/hubba tricks (think Bootleg 3000 or the Mikey Taylor 411, only the rollouts look very different from those of LA schoolyards), and then just the survival of lots and lots of ridiculously janky spot configurations. It’s a sit on the edge of your seat from start to finish kind of situation, and the fact that Andréa didn’t even give himself a single clip in the vid, that financially he chose to take the hit of making and premiering this himself rather than taking the Monster money that was offered to him, that there’s inevitably a million other sacrifices that were made by everyone involved for this to be in front of you today – it feels really fucking special.
Major shoutout to Baseline Skateshop for supporting all the skateboarders in this video 🙂
