Bones Brigade: An Autobiography

Stacy Peralta's 2012 documentary is about a skateboarding team that came together in the eighties. Peralta founded that team and has made the film as though writing his own history, which is both its strength and its limit. Most of the young riders were misfits at school, shy or excluded, and skating gave them a place for the first time. The film shows that transformation through personal accounts and also follows the sport's technical development: the move from pools to the street, the invention of new tricks and how videotapes spread the culture. Fame arriving young and then dispersing makes up the second half. Speaking from the present, the participants also voice the old frictions among them. Who it's for: viewers who like skate culture and sports documentary. Who it's not for: anyone expecting a neutral account; the film is built from the team's own view.