Burmese Skateboarders Lobby for Official Recognition
March 25,2013
A small community of skateboarders in Rangoon, who lost their skate park four years ago, has made a film to try to promote their dream of building a replacement. The creative effort to get skateboarding recognized as an official sport in Burma.
The Speed Ring Skate Club, comprise of 20 young Burmese with a passion for skateboarding in a country where skateboards are rare.
The skaters first learned their tricks at this park. But four years ago it was destroyed, for reasons that are not entirely clear. Now, these skaters have a choice of perfecting their skills on poorly paved and crowded streets or making a five hour journey to the remote capital, Naypyitaw, where Japanese donors built a skate park hundreds of kilometers from the nearest skaters.
Akar Bo says the distance means he rarely visits. "We need a good place to skateboard. They should have built this in Rangoon," he added.
The group has taken matters into their own hands, making a film about their cause that they hope will win over officials - and draw more aspiring skaters to their ranks.
Filmmaker Ali Drummond, a skateboarder from Britain who was saddened by the loss of the Rangoon skate park, says the film has helped them believe their goal is achievable.
"This is Myanmar [Burma]. No one is going to sponsor us as skateboarders. And, in the past, no one has shown any interest in them. In fact, they'd actually just shown hostility toward them as a group of people," Drummond said. "So they had no belief in themselves that anyone was going to help them from Myanmar. So I think this film essentially changed that to a certain extent.
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