Since we’re premiering Colin Read’s long-awaited film Spirit Quest tomorrow, we thought we’d tell you a bit about why it’s so fucking good…
Every few years somebody drops a skate video that totally shakes up the scene, something truly different that not only offers fresh spots and NBD or unfashionable tricks, but also a new way of looking at skateboarding.
Colin ‘Mandible Claw’ Read is a filmmaker, simple as. He sees skateboarding from behind the eye of a lens, professionally. Many can claim to do the same, but it is rare that people use that position as creatively as Colin Read has done with Spirit Quest. It is a skate video that is so true to the phrase a new way of looking at skateboarding that it’s sometimes hard to actually understand that what you’re looking at is skateboarding.
Without giving too much away, this film is one a half hours of mindbending skate mayhem. Shot on the streets of New York, about 60% of the time at night, Colin chases skaters like a lion after its prey, getting so low and close to their tails that you can’t believe they aren’t one and the same creature. To add to this incredible feat, from time to time Colin does all this with two cameras at the same time, meaning he can jump cut between two takes, with split screen skating and unfathomable transitions.
Three years of Mandible Claw’s life has been spent documenting the skaters in Spirit Quest, scouring for footage of jungle creatures, and somehow translating one into the other before our eyes. A bald head becomes a moon, becomes a bollard; a leaping frog, becomes a hippie jump, becomes a frog fountain, becomes a noseslide.
A NEW WAY OF LOOKING AT SKATEBOARDING
We’ll cut it there, we don’t want to spoil the film for you. And even if we did, it’s far too difficult to explain what exactly is happening in Spirit Quest. But you can see it all for yourself tomorrow at Romantso, Athens from 8pm.
Tomorrow’s event kicks off at 8pm, with the video starting promptly at 8:30. There will then be an afterparty from 10:30, with a live DJ set from the Minister of Concret (Alex Segiet).
