This week we’re launching the First Annual Anti-Communist Film Festival. The event will be held at the Victims of Communism Museum in Washington, D.C.
Registration and admission are free. We do have sponsorships for those who want to support the work going forward. The largest sponsorship is the Festival Founding Patron which is $50,000. For that you become the “Exclusive naming sponsor of the Film Festival.”
Should we be lucky enough to have someone make a donation, they can name the festival after whatever they want. Obvious names are the John Paul II Film Festival, or the Ai WeiWei Film Festival—or even The Unknown Hoya Film Festival.
If I was given the chance, I’d name it after Letna Park. Letna Park is a huge and beautiful gathering place in Prague, Czechoslovakia. It once showcased the world’s largest monument to dictator Josef Stalin. It’s now a skatepark. In 2021 the Check historian Erika Cizek described the scene:
Today, the platform at the centre of Letná Park holds a massive metronome sculpture, and the tiled area surrounding the metronome is used by local youth as a skatepark. This is a place of near constant movement, seemingly permanently occupied by young people skateboarding or taking in the panoramic views of the city. Beyond this vibrant contemporary presence, however, lies a deeply significant history: the platform where the metronome stands today was once home to the world’s largest monument to Stalin. This monument held immense symbolic power, and remnants of this monument remain today in the form of the massive plinth left behind, as well as the enduring name of this location: U Stalina (at Stalin’s). The youthful energy of the Metronome starkly contrasts with the tangible memory of a brutal regime of the past, and its symbolic proliferator.
The Letna Park Anti-Communist Film Festival. I like it. It has some flow and poetry to it. It also fits with one of the films I hope to screen at a future festival, King Skate. Released in 2018 and directed by Šimon Šafránek, the documentary celebrates the way Czechoslovakian skateboarders defied their communist rulers, who during the Cold War trued to suppress skateboarding as a “hooligan” activity that promoted capitalism. The film focuses on the pioneers of Czechoslovak skateboarding including Ivan Pelikán, Petr Forman and Luděk Váša. Through homemade materials, attitude and a desire for freedom, these riders turned skateboarding into a defiant stance against totalitarianism.
Skateboarding was long known as an anarchic and outsider sport, but it’s more conservative than people think, valuing rules, honor, place and history. Last year a skateboarder took to the pages of Thrasher magazine to object to the activity of ICE. Many of the comments pushed back. Here’s one from skateboarder Dave Killebrew:
Why are so many American skaters, musicians, actors, etc. against borders?
Like, I get it, you wanna skate where you want and stuff. I’m all in favor of the rebel mentality and doing what you want, especially in a creative context… but not at the cost of the sovereignty of my nation. Especially when I live in the most prosperous and powerful nation that has ever existed. When my nation has contributed technological and medical advancements that have doubled, if not tripled life spans in many parts of the world. We’ve lifted many societies out of the stone ages, kickstarted the Industrial Revolution, created cars and planes, put people in space and walked on the moon. The U.S. and yes, capitalism did that.
Sorry, I’m not in favor of opening the floodgates and handing the reins to people of other nations, many of whom would change the very foundations our nation is based on.
In his 2012 book, The Most Fun Thing: Dispatches from a Skateboard Life, Kyle Beachy makes the point that skateboarding is one of the few things in life that doesn’t lie to you. When you’re standing at the tip of a hill and ready to shred, you’ll be able to do it or you won’t. Nobody’s going to soften the landing for you. Beachy:
How many of us, I wonder, are lucky enough or doomed enough to have a force such as this in our lives? A practice, I mean, a pursuit or activity, an entity, in reality any kind of thing whatsoever, that we fear or respect enough that we will not lie to it, or try to trick it, or approach it with anything less than total candor? A thing that we know can see through us.
Skateboarding doesn’t lie. Communism is based on nothing but lies. One of the strongest female athletes to stay against the nonsense of transgenderism is a skateboarder named Taylor Silverman, who has competed against biological males three times in skateboarding contests. In two of the three competitions she came in second, losing to a man who claimed to be a “trans woman.” “I deserved to place first, be acknowledged for my win and to get paid,” Silverman wrote on Instagram. “I am sick of being bullied into silence.” Silverman openly objected, even blasting the National Organization of Women. She told Fox News:
I take the National Organization for Women claiming that fairness in women’s sports is white supremacy about as seriously as I take them claiming men can be women. They are blinded by this lie and desperate to scare people into silence. Men in women’s sports impacts all women, including minorities that the National Organization for Women seemingly want to erase to push their ridiculous narrative.
It’s not surprising that Jordan Peterson is a fan of skateboarding.