Electricity Inside (About a Skate Video)

Watching a Kilian Martin skate video filmed by friend and collaborator Brett Novak is akin to witnessing Michael Jordan fly through space to dunk a basketball for the first time. It is poetry in motion, and hard evidence of athletes near the peak of their creative and physical powers. But Kilian wasn’t always a skateboarder. As a kid growing up in Madrid, he first tried gymnastics, yet quickly realized that skateboarding offered a level of expression that was much more his personal tempo. Fast forward to skate videos that generate millions of YouTube hits and sponsorships with legendary brands like Vision Street Wear and Powell-Peralta, Kilian brings all that he learned as a young gymnast and combines them with the last thirty years of street and freestyle skateboarding. The result is an homage to the form itself – from skating’s early acrobatic days in the 60s to the street innovations of the 90s. As captured with Brett’s elegiac cinematography, Kilian takes freestyle skateboarding into the twenty-first century with his artful and inspiring take on handstands, helipops, and heel flips.

See more of Kilian HERE. Check out Brett’s work HERE. Check HERE for a Kilian feature in mb! magazine.

Production: Kitty Bolhoefer/ Filming & Photos: Fridolin Schöpper / Editing: Konterfei / Music: Bunnystripes / Sound: Kevin Pate