"Many of us have created lives that give very little support for experimentation. We believe that answers already exist out there, independent of us. What if we invested more time and attention to our own experimentation? We could focus our efforts on discovering solutions that work uniquely for us."
Truer words have never been spoken, as the say.
I am excited to say that after several incarnations, castings, un-castings, re-castings, rewrites, anxiety attacks, meetings, discussions, consultations, and other fun stuff, I have finally come to settle on the direction of my next short documentary film. I believe that things tend to unfold the way they are meant to and pieces always have a way of falling into place. In going through this process of pre-production I came to realize that the film I was trying to make happen wasn't really the film that I wanted to make in my heart and was beginning to turn into the film that other people wanted to see me make. I had one day last week where I shut everything out of my head and went to where what most people would call a meditative state. I downloaded a bunch of new music, filled up my iPod, grabbed a coffee and went on one my long walks around the East Village with the headphones on....and just like that, everything made perfect sense. The film I wanted to make was there all along, and in the style I have wanted to explore before even beginning classes at NYFA. The music inspired images that were just flying through my head and although my eyes saw the street and the sidewalk in front of me, overlayed in my mind was the look, feel, and sound of my film. As soon as I got home I wrote this synopsis within only a few minutes, one draft. With 3 weeks of principle photography lost now, the amount of work ahead to make this film happen in such a short time is daunting to say the least...But it will happen and I can't describe how enthusiastic I am about whats coming next.
Since the dawn of the human race, people have sought both a physical and transcendental connection to their natural environment. Some pursued this through meditation and spirituality while others through physical activity, all looking to achieve a perfect balance within themselves and their surroundings.
In our modern times there is one group of individuals who have found this connection not through nature but through the man-made world we have created for ourselves in which to dwell. They are skateboarders. In particular, New York City skateboarders, who have pioneered the art of “street skateboarding” by mastering their surroundings by means of what was once a just a simple mode of transportation.
Skateboarders have a special connection to their environment.
They see it differently. The utilize it differently. They see the urban landscape's true potential and in a both physical and transcendent way becoming a part of that landscape; connected to it, part of the City's pulse.
This visually striking, experimental, short film explores the connection between New York City skateboarders and “the City that Never Sleeps” in both physical and metaphysical capacities as these skateboarders adapt themselves to the ever moving and infinitely changing terrain, almost unconsciously connecting to the city in the most divine of ways.
Through verite of these holy dances, interviews with the skateboarders themselves, and the creative eye of the film maker, this ethereal world of harsh and hardened beauty comes to life in the visual and aural connection between man and the domain that has been laid down over the natural world, giving insight into a culture and a perspective unique only to these unconventional artists.
-JR Cronheim
Writer/Director
