8/11 (sat), 22:00 ~ Uno Port Pier#2 Trailer Theater,
8/13 (mon), 13:00 ~ Sangyo-Shinko Bldg 3F
Dir: Kai Sehr, Producer: Rene Kock, Writer/Editor: Nadia Soraya Hennrich, Afghanistan/USA/Germany, 2011, 95min, documentary, (from NAF Selects)*
Synopsis
In 2007, OLIVER PERCOVICH and SHARNA NOLAN arrive in Kabul with little more than a couple of skateboards. In a country where children constitute more than half the population, Ollie and Sharna soon discover, that their boards draw local children like a magnetic force. After beginning regular skateboarding sessions in an abandoned fountain, one of the few smooth surfaces in Kabul, local boys and girls from the streets start to join them on a daily basis. These initial encounters, informal at first, eventually lead to the foundation of Skateistan, Afghanistan’s first co-educational skateboarding school. The movie tells Skateistan’s story.
The film follows Skateistan and its founders through the year 2009, documenting their daily struggle to break down social, gender and ethnic barriers between the children of a war-torn country. The founders quickly find out that local custom allows girls to practice sports publicly only up to the age of 12. They realize, that they will need a private indoor facility to continue work with the girls.
With a sense of great determination, Oliver commits to build a new, state-of the-art indoor skate park – and after a year of skating in the empty fountain, Skateistan manages to construct a world-class skate park, complete with a half-pipe and a wide variety of ramps. But the new skate park is more than just a smooth surface; the facility also houses classrooms equipped with computers, locker rooms, and showers to promote basic hygiene and offers access to basic medical care. This is where Skateistan promotes assertiveness and individuality, strength and confidence, dignity and respect towards others, autonomy and, naturally, a love of skateboarding. Healthy habits, civic responsibility, information technology, the arts and languages are all taught in Skateistan’s classrooms to over 300 registered children.
‘Skateistan – Four Wheels and a Board in Kabul’ documents life in Afghanistan without preconception or prejudice. The documentary is homage to an amazing aid alternative and, of course, to skating. A look at Kabul in a way that hasn’t been covered by western media, at the austere lives of Afghanistan’s children and the volunteers of Skateistan. The film has no political agenda, it tells the story of how a group of amateur skaters bridge ethnic, religious and socio-economic barriers to bring hope to the children of a war-torn country – with the help of four wheels and a board.*(NAF Selects)
We’d like to send our heartfelt thanks to Ms. Nadia Hennrich to make this screening possible. Thank you!
8/11, 22:00, Uno Port Pier#2 Trailer Theater
8/13, 13:00, Sangyo-Shinko Bldg, 3F Media Room
THE FILMMAKERS
KAI SEHR (Director), born in Düsseldorf in 1965, is an avid skateboarder and has directed music Page 7 of 27 SKATEISTAN videos and commercials for more than twenty years. He studied directing at The American Film Institute and has received numerous awards for his commercial work including two Cannes Lions, a
Montreux Golden Award, and numerous awards from the Art Director Clubs in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. This is his first feature film as a director.
RENE KOCK (Producer), born in Hamburg, grew up thinking that he was destined to become a sea captain. While hitchhiking from Hamburg to a vacation in Croatia before the final year of his studies,a gear-laden 1970 VW station wagon pulled to the side of the road a few meters from where Rene was standing. After a short conversation, the thin man with long hair who was driving the car agreed to take him as far as Munich. The man turned out to be Werner Herzog, and after a dozen hours of driving followed by an exhausted collapse onto Herzog’s couch, Rene was lost to the sea forever.
Beginning his career with the German network NDR, he has now produced television commercials,feature films, and television programs for almost forty years from his base in Los Angeles. Before asking his crew to embark on the trip to Afghanistan, Rene travelled alone to Kabul so that he could personally assess the risks and feasibility of production, and was instantly charmed by what he saw and the people that he met. Rene’s most recent long-form production was The Red Baron (2008), distributed by Warner Bros. Germany.
NADIA SORAYA HENNRICH (Writer/Editor) was born in Hamburg, moved to Teheran as a young girl, and remained there until 1982. While in Kabul for production, Nadia couldn’t help but be reminded of life in Iran, albeit without the skateboards. After earning a degree in chemistry, Nadia
was drawn to the editing room when a friend introduced her to the world of filmmaking. She moved to the United States in 2002 after being recruited by a production house in the US, and in the intervening years has edited commercials, music videos, and various long format films.
RALPH “KALLE” DOBRICK (Director of Photography) studied still photography before entering the film business as a lighting technician. He now lives in Berlin, where he shoots TV shows, commercials, and music videos. An avid gardener and builder, “Kabul Kalle” took advantage of some breaks in the production schedule to construct a new doghouse for Skateistan dogs Cookie and Ricky and plant a row of trees in the nearby garden so they could relax in the shade.
KEN MEYER (Executive Producer), was born in New York and received an anthropology degree from Columbia. After moving to Paris, he landed in the film and television business completely by accident, working with renowned French directors Claude Chabrol, Jean Becker, and Alexandre Arcady, among others. In the past thirty years, Ken has been involved with more than seventy film and television productions; his most recent credits include David M. Rosenthal’s Janie Jones,starring Abigail Breslin, Alessandro Nivola, and Elisabeth Shue (2011 Tribeca Film Festival); Werner Herzog’s My Son My Son starring Michael Shannon, Willem Dafoe, and Chloe Sevigny (2009 Venice Film Festival); Alex Cox’s Repo Chick starring Miguel Sandoval and Rosanna Arquette (2009 Venice Film Festival); and Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience starring Sasha Grey (2009 Sundance Film Festival). Ironically, Ken’s first production credit came on the 1980 NBC Magazine special “INSIDE AFGHANISTAN” and with Skateistan he comes full circle.
FEATURES-WHILE-U- WAIT and DEFILM (Production Companies). The film was produced as a Page 8 of 27 SKATEISTAN German-American co-production between FEATURES-WHILE-U- WAIT (Los Angeles) and DEFILM (Hannover), and was made with the support of Nordmedia, the media fund for Germany’s Lower Saxony and Bremen regions. In one of life’s more interesting twists, Hamburg-born Rene Kock is the film’s American co-producer and New York–born Ken Meyer is its German coproducer.
THE MUSIC
The film’s soundtrack features an eclectic mix combining original music written and performed by composer REX FARADAY, skater punk performed by a slew of cutting edge European bands including Germany’s BEATSTEAKS and the UK’s BILLY CHILDISH, and music of the region performed by FARHAD DARYA (known as “the founder of Afghanistan’s resistance music”) and Iran’s MAMAK KHADEM (“…one of the wonders of world trance music” – Los Angeles Times).