The Long History Of Skateboarding Explained

In the early days of pop skateboarding, Stacy Peralta, an original member of the Zephyr Skate Crew, shot films of "vert" skate competitions on professional video equipment. According to Premium Beat, Peralta's videos were released on VHS tapes with the title "The Bones Brigade Video Show." But skateboarding film as we now know it came along later, with the invention of the handheld camcorder. With their first video, 1988's "Shackle Me Not," a skate collective called H-Street pioneered the modern skate video aesthetic: lo-fi and D.I.Y. elements, fisheye lenses, clips of skaters showing their personalities between tricks.

Before long, skate filmography was leaking into Hollywood. Skate films were already out there, including the Oscar-nominated 1965 short film "Skaterdater." The iconic skateboarding scene in 1985's "Back to the Future" inspired a generation of skaters, including Patrick O'Dell, who later created the Viceland skateboarding documentary series "Epicly Later'd," per The Ringer.

But things took off further in the post-skate-video world of the 1990s. Spike Jonze, who is now known for directing movies like "Being John Malkovich" and "Her," got his start in the skateboarding world. Perhaps the most impactful skateboarding movie — which isn't really about skateboarding at all — is Larry Clark's "Kids." The 1995 cult classic featured a cast of real-life skate kids and was written by the then-teenaged-skateboarder Harmony Korine. And it reflected back at the skate world the grungy, handmade aesthetic originally cultivated by skate videographers.