Director Sasha Rainbow shot a colorful and engaging music video-clip in Bangalore, India, exploring the female skate scene.
Girl Skate India. (Image via Sasha Rainbow Vimeo/Screenshot)
The video-clip is for British band Wild Beasts’ latest single Alpha Female, taken from their album “Boy King.” Rainbow started working in film in 2009; prior to this, she worked as a stylist, art director, and photographer.
Pink sari-clad skater Rebecca. (Image via Sasha Rainbow Vimeo/Screenshot)
She came to know about India’s female skateboarding scene through Skateistan, an NGO where her best friend works. Skateistan uses skateboarding and education for youth empowerment in Afghanistan, Cambodia, and South Africa.
Seven-year-old skater Kamali Moorthy. (Image via Sasha Rainbow Vimeo/Screenshot)
Rainbow wanted to show how skateboarding is reaching far beyond its roots in Southern California to young women in India. In the music video-clip, she follows India’s first professional female skateboarder, Atita Verghese.
She also films all-girl skateboarding collectives like Girl Skate India and the Holystoked Skate Crew. All the reactions of the men watching the skaters were real and not staged. Although skateboarding is becoming more popular in India, it still is not common to see a girl on a skateboard, especially in a sari.
India’s first professional female skater, Atita Verghese (Image via Sasha Rainbow Vimeo/Screenshot)
It took two weeks in Bangalore to shoot and five months to complete. Rainbow was so inspired working with the girls that she plans to head back and make a documentary.
Up and coming skater girls in India. (Image via Sasha Rainbow Vimeo/Screenshot)
A documentary film from 2015 by Virginia Fernandes entitled Girl Skate India Tour is below if you want to explore some of the work Atita Verghese and the all-girl skate collectives are doing in India.
Girl Skate India was launched by Verghese as an initiative to teach girls how to skate, promote gender equality in skating, and highlight up-and-coming female skaters in India.
Here is the 14-minute documentary and synopsis from the website:
Twelve female skateboarders from nine different countries embark on a skateboarding journey through India. This film captures the essence of the emerging skateboarding scene in India, and the perspectives and encounters through the eyes of female skateboarders from all over the world. In a bus, they travel with a filmmaker, photographer, and skate yoga instructor to teach, do demos, build, and empower Indian girls to take part.
And if you still want to learn more, listen to the TEDX talk by Atita Verghese entitled, When girls skateboard in India.
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The post Music Video Clip Shows India’s Female Skateboarding Scene appeared first on Vision Times.
