SKATE AND RESIST -- SKATEISTAN, THE DOCUMENTARY

One of the best documentaries I've seen for a long while. And it's just 10 minutes long! Awesomely told stories like this that are full of woe and informed by the culture of resistance make me go a big, wet one. And not in the way you think, pervert.

Watch and get yer heart strings pulled.



From the Wired article:

Skateistan Examines Struggles of Young Afghan Skateboarders

by Erik Malinowski

Sports, in its most profound sense, can be cathartic in ways beyond our comprehension. In times of turmoil and anguish, sports’ therapeutic abilities can lead us out of the darkness and toward a better place — if not tangibly, then in the recesses of our minds.


Sometimes, all it takes is a skateboard.

In the war-ravaged streets of Kabul, Afghanistan, that’s what a group of youngsters is experiencing today, thanks to Skateistan, which hosts more than 300 boys and girls from the community every week in classes that focus on skateboarding and education in general. This nongovernmental organization is also the focus of a fascinating, emotional new documentary called Skateistan: To Live and Skate in Kabul. This raw look at young Afghan ‘boarders illustrates the daily struggle to survive in one of the most-violent and poorest places on Earth, and how skateboarding is helping them rise above it all.

Murza, a 17-year-old from the Khayr Khana neighborhood of Kabul, once had to support his family by bringing in extra cash as a car washer, but now he works at Skateistan, cleaning up the facility as well as training other would-be skaters. For him, the violence has become part of his daily routine — “It’s been happening throughout my life, and it will continue into the future” — but Skateistan’s mere existence has given him hope that better days are ahead.

Sharna Nolan, an Australian expat now living in Afghanistan, co-founded Skateistan back in 2007, and has witnessed first-hand how the hobby has changed the lives of those who walk through her doors. “Skateboarding’s a fantastic way to communicate with each other and build relationships with each other,” she says in the film. “There’s nothing like watching an Afghan woman roll down the ramp for the first time and she’s achieved something that she never thought she would.”

Read the whole thing HERE.