From left, MHSA members Michaela Burgess, Drayton Turton and Davie James pose in front of their poster at the Monarch Theatre.-Submitted Photo
asmith@medicinehatnews.com
The Medicine Hat Skateboard Association has been blown away by the public support for their upcoming documentary, Rolling for Hope.
The documentary covers the group’s humanitarian trip to Mexico, which took place earlier this year, says Davie James, MHSA board member and Monarch organizer. While there, they built a home for a family in need, and worked on upgrading a home for girls, many of whom are child trafficking survivors.
The documentary itself is “just sort of jimmied together,” said James, but the results speak for themselves.
“We decided to bring someone to film with us, but honestly we had thought we would just kind of do a bit of a highlight video to show parents, family and friends,” said James. “Just to kind of showcase what we got up to on our humanitarian trip, but it sort of evolved into this short film.”
The experience was eye-opening, much like the trip itself, as James admitted that in the case of many of their projects they’re often reaching out to those with more expertise.
“What do skateboarders know about building houses? Or what do we know about feminine products? You know, there’s a lot of campaigns we’ve been up to recently, where we lack in education, so we’ve been reaching out to community groups and supporters like Medicine Hat Tourism, who sort of hold our hand along the way,” said James.
The energy in the association is electric leading up to the May 9 premiere, said James, which is only aided by the outpouring of support from the larger community for the film, from what was initially expected to be more of a friends and family event. As of writing, tickets are already roughly 75 per cent sold out, prompting MHSA to go ahead with a second showing on May 10 to keep ahead of demand.
With the rate tickets are selling, James encourages those interested to pick theirs up quickly.
“Ideally, with a lot of these documentaries, you find major media sponsors, or you get huge federal grants,” said James. “Usually the filmmaker will have a team of filmmakers with him and stuff like that. But we had one filmer with us. And we kind of just put this all together, and it’s an incredible film. So it’s just kind of mind blowing.”
James added he hopes to see the film entered into festivals, but added that the people of the city will let them know if that’s in their future after this initial showing.
MHSA has endeavoured for the past 20 years to improve the image of skateboarding in the city, and James feels projects like this certainly help to highlight all the good work done over the roughly seven peer groups that have gone through the association.
The premiere will be held at the Monarch Theatre, starting at 7 p.m. Rolling For Hope premiere is presented in partnership with Tourism Medicine Hat, and sponsored by Stringam Law. Profits from the documentary go to supporting local community initiatives, including Canada Day 2024.
