By Sarah Carnvek
The alleyways of the Old City of Jerusalem are hard enough to navigate on foot. Imagine trying to plot a route on a skateboard.
That's exactly what 14 members of the Longboard Girls Crew (LGC), an international longboard community and support network for female riders, did on a recent visit to Israel.
Hailing from Argentina, Australia, Canada, Panama, Spain, Sweden, the US and Venezuela, the women skaters took part in a documentary film aimed at showing a different perspective of longboarding -- like skateboarding but on a longer board -- in one of the most talked-about countries in the world.
The film is called OPEN and it's meant to do just that for viewers: open their minds to new experiences by following the interactions and emotions of skaters whooshing through scenery including the Golan Heights, the Old City of Jerusalem, the dramatic Judean Desert and the vibrant metropolis of Tel Aviv.
The Tourism Ministry helped bring the crew over to film in Israel. DaSilva Boards, the first and largest longboard brand in Israel, worked with LGC on logistics. Production of OPEN was supported by an indiegogo crowd-funding campaign.
"It's really exciting. It's fun to see this happening in our small little country," says Tom Goldwasser, one of the co-owners of DaSilva, as well as director assistant and second camera on the film project. "The girls who are riding really are top athletes."
Women on skates
In 2011, LGC filmed a road trip across Spain. The movie, Endless Roads, logged over 3,000,000 views. Organizers decided it was time to break that record and film a new road trip – this time in Israel.
Venezuelan filmmaker Daniel Etura, himself a skater based in Madrid, was brought in to direct the film. For Monica Madenfrost, head producer of OPEN, and her sister, Jacky, responsible for production and sound, the project is personal and a "great and exciting challenge."
The Madenfrost sisters, who live in Spain, originally hail from Venezuela and lived in Israel along the way. They started LGC in 2010 to help promote women in sport.
"Tired of being the only girls in mostly boy’s crews, we decided to get together and create a group in Facebook to meet, hang and skate with each other. Our mission was to get together and place female longboarding on the map," reads their mission statement.
Today, LGC has more than 150,000 Facebook fans, over eight million video hits, and ambassadors in more than 40 countries.
"Amazing things have happened to this sport and to us during these years … but the most important of all is having encouraged thousands of women to grab a board and start longboarding. Together we have built something big, something that has changed female longboarding and the way people see it worldwide," they write on their website.
Longboarding in Israel
In addition to helping promote the sport and Israel as a travel destination, the girls' crew also joined forces with Longboarding for Peace a sports association that aims to "build peace between Arab and Israeli children," says founder Michael Brooke, better known as the publisher of the skateboarding world's best-read magazine, Concrete Wave.
Concrete Wave worked with Surfing for Peace and the Peres Center for Peace to create a series of workshops in Jaffa, Sderot, East Jerusalem and Jericho in July 2012.
"Longboards seem to magically transform the children (and adults) -- there were smiles all around and people who normally wouldn't interact with each other, began to do so. This program helps sow the seeds for peace because it is focused on people having fun and learning to trust one another," Brooke writes on Longboarding for Peace's Facebook page. "We want to continue this program with the Arab and Israeli youth in Jaffa/Tel Aviv at the Peres Center for Peace."
The sport of longboarding is "still in its infancy in Israel," says Goldwasser. "We started about two and a half years ago. The sport is slowly catching on."
Israel makes a beautiful backdrop for the new documentary, he adds.
"The riders experience Israel on a very personal level because they're doing something they truly love. There's also the connection to the land physically. Crashing a few times really connects you."