The Skate & Surf Film Festival goes online
The fourth edition of the event powered by Vans will be streaming on May 8-10, 2020
Pills
April 21st, 2020
April 21st, 2020
Photographer
Laurent Bentil
Laurent Bentil
It's no secret that the spread of COVID-19 has blocked many events that were scheduled for spring. Due to the lockdown, a lot of festivals planned all around the world had to postpone their activities or even cancel them (visit this link to read the full list). On the other hand, many other festivals have chosen to reinvent themselves.
That's the case with the Skate & Surf Film Festival, the cinematographic exposition that shines a light on the international surf and skate scene through contests and workshops, promoting culture via unreleased films, documentaries, art exhibitions and music.
The fourth edition of the festival was scheduled at BASE Milano for the weekend of June 12-13-14, 2020. Thanks to the support of the main sponsor Vans, that continued to believe in the project, the founder of the festival Luca Merli and his staff decided not to give up. Maintaining the concept and adapting to this difficult and tragic time, a brand new version was born: the V-SSFF (Virtual-Skate & Surf Film Festival).
Since the beginning, SSFF has always tried to give voice and support to the Surf and Skate community in all its forms and facets, so now more than ever in a moment of uncertainty, social distancing and self-isolation, the idea of giving a strong message strong, to keep it as united as possible, it seemed right and immediate. The online experience is only a different medium that we use, but the goal remains the same that has characterized the festival in all these years, Enrico Cerovac, one of the organizers of the festival, as well as director and photographer, told nss magazine.
The appointment is for May 8-10, 2020 live streaming on the official website and on Facebook and Instagram, with a rich program of movie premieres, films, interviews with filmmakers, skaters and surfers, Q&A’s, a virtual art show, skate contests from home, radio streaming and much more.
Many filmmakers who have participated in past editions have all been super enthusiastic about the idea, we have received a lot of films from all over the world, even if there will not be like in the past years a real aggregation event the response in general by of the festival audience (also internationally) was very strong, continues Cerovac.
One of the most anticipated moments of the event was undoubtedly the skate contest, another important gathering moment, as well as one of the most entertaining aspects of the festival, also destined to reinvent itself online.
The intelligence and creativity of skateboarders will never cease to amaze me, each of us is finding a way to create a space in the house to use our deck in the most absurd ways, for the rest you keep in touch much more often through social media and it is also a nice moment of comparison that never hurts.
To further characterize this particular edition of the SSFF, there is the concrete contribution that the event will offer to EMERGENCY, as Cerovac himself explained to nss magazine.
In the last two years we have dedicated a large portion of our efforts to an exhibition area within the festival where we have hosted several Italian and international photographers and artists from the skate and surf world, for many of them we have printed their photos for the various editions, which have then remained in the SSFF archive. Hence the idea of withdrawing those prints and putting them on sale at a symbolic price, all proceeds will be donated to the management of the new field hospital in Bergamo where doctors, nurses, physiotherapists and Emergency logistics together with the experts of epidemics and pandemics, will manage the new intensive and sub-intensive care unit and also together with all their activities related to the current ongoing health emergency. A small contribution but which I hope will be of help, here I would like to thank once again all the photographers who have joined the initiative, all the people who are making their contribution and the whole crew of the festival!
