10 Years, Fear & Joy, Sparkour, and Gatecrasher with Renae and Lisa
We have some awesome things to go over from the past week of news, releases, and upcoming events - but first, I wanted to let you all in on a secret. We’ve been chipping away at our next release and no, it isn’t our feature with Davis (although we may be doing some fresh work on that this weekend too).
No release date yet, but our next piece is a 10 minute short on last year’s MoveNYC event organized by The Movement Creative. After shooting with Jarrod Luty and Try Hard last year, we wanted to create something that emphasized a different, less accomplishment-driven piece of the parkour community. We think this piece, which features Jesse Danger, Mike Araujo, Cristina Latici, and Daniel Harrison Bregman, will do just that…so keep your eyes and ears peeled for a trailer release and more info. We’ll likely be dropping an unlisted link to the trailer here first!
10 Years
Jared Nahulu has been at the top of the bar game for what feels like more than a decade. Turns out, it’s ten years precisely and we get the chance to watch him grow up through parkour with his newest release 10 Years. I’ve known Jared since he was probably 16…I remember running into him at APEX before he exploded onto the scene with his finals run against DK at the APEX International in 2016. Since then, I’ve been lucky enough to train with him (semi) regularly and see in person just how ridiculous his lache skills are. It seriously cannot be overstated…watching him swing in person occasionally makes me question if I’m living in the Matrix and he is trying to break me out. That having been said, Jared’s other skills have always been top tier too. I loved seeing his development as an athlete in 10 Years and how his relationship to movement, accomplishment, and fulfillment clearly goes through some dramatic changes. It’s a piece that you should set aside the time for…and even if you don’t, odds are you’ll finish the whole thing before you realized what happened.
Fear & Joy
Flynn Disney (@flynndisney) is hosting a “Fear & Joy Run” in London on February 25th with a sliding scale for paid participation. From the event description, it seems like a more nuanced throwback to the days of Blane’s “Hell Night” and OG blog posts from first generation practitioners training with the Yamakasi. I love seeing folks touching base with parkour’s roots in a way that feels like it values the deep impact those roots had on practitioners while simultaneously embracing the lessons we have learned when it comes to movement practice and quality. Flynn is an amazing athlete and thoughtful, thought-provoking coach. I’m just jealous I’ll be stuck here in Denver and not running around the alleys of London!
Athlete Feature: Sparsha Pun
Sparsha (@spar.kour) is an athlete from Boston who came through the Parkour Generations Americas program. He also happens to be - and I don’t say this lightly - one of the best athletes I’ve ever met when it comes to foot placement. I had the chance to coach him (I’ll be honest, it ended up being a training session where he pushed me as much as I got to push him) at one of the ARDVZ events in the twentyteens. He was phenomenal then and he’s only gotten better. If you don’t believe, check out this recent rail running post of his…I haven’t seen moves like that since Dylan Baker stopped posting clips in 2018. So give Sparsha a follow if you want constant inspiration to step/jump to/run on tiny cylindrical objects at unbelievable speeds.
The women behind Gatecrashers. Photos courtesy of Hazal Nehir
All Things Gatecrasher with Renae Dambly and Lisa Schneider
Sean and I were both lucky enough to provide some production assistance with the upcoming Gatecrasher project…and we are incredibly excited that Renae and Lisa chose Point A to host the film on YouTube. I also got to pop in to help film the final week in Budapest. All I can say is, I can’t wait for folks to see the footage because these ladies threw down hard. While we’re so proud of what Queen City did in the parkour community when it came out, I can’t deny that Gatecrasher will set a new standard for the women’s parkour scene when it drops. I also need to say how amazing Lisa and Renae were for the hundreds of hours they put into this project between putting together the team, organizing the Kickstarter, planning the three weeks, producing the film, and now organizing the clothing/post production. It’s a full-time job for a project this big and at the end of the day, they’ll probably end up doing it for about $0.25/hour.
With all that in mind, I touched base with Renae and Lisa to get their thoughts on how the filming went, how the edit/post-production is going, and what folks should expect when Gatecrasher is released later this year!
What are your names and where are you from/where are you living at the moment?
R: Renae Dambly. I was born in Denver, Colorado, USA. Now based in Hamburg, Germany.
L: My name is Lisa and I’m currently living in Linz/ Austria.
Okay, so Gatecrashers. What is it and why did you decide to make it happen?
R: Gatecrasher is a hybrid between a short action film and a documentary following 9 female parkour athletes exploring 3 cities in eastern Europe.
L: It’s an all women’s parkour video. The reason I wanted to make it happen is because I really wanted to see a video like this and turns out Renae was thinking the same thing. I also think it’s so needed for parkour to have the female community highlighted and see how many amazing women there are in the sport.
R: I was really annoyed with all these high production parkour video projects coming out and not seeing any female talent represented. Basically, there is a huge pool of female talent in parkour that not many people know about or value, so Lisa and I wanted to showcase a larger group of these women to the world. As the saying goes “if you want something done, do it yourself”.
What were your biggest inspirations going in? What other badass women’s sports films should folks watch while they’re waiting for Toby to finish the edit?
R: My biggest inspiration was the ‘Movement of Three’ video directed by Julie Angle. I think they did such a great job capturing the playfulness, strength, and variety of some of the women who were training at that time that you don’t often see from male practitioners.
L: I was really inspired by snowboard films. My biggest inspiration was probably Hot Coco which you can watch on red bull tv and the uninvited on youtube.
R: There’s a bunch of ski, climbing, snowboard, and skateboard films that Lisa and I watched to get some inspiration. Pretty Strong, Hot Coco, Pretty Faces, and Full Moon to name a few.
It was a long trip - what were your individual highlights and low points?
R: I honestly struggled throughout the whole trip. I was going through a deep depression at the time which heavily affected my motivation and energy. [But] there were a few challenges I was able to break and hit flow state that really made a difference for me. We also had a few random dancing moments during the trip that I would definitely classify as a personal highlight.
L: Honestly the whole trip was a highlight and the fact that we actually managed to make it happen and to get all the women together, seeing everyone in a room together for the first time was incredible. I think a low point was Elise getting injured so close before the end of the trip.
What do you think the group highs and lows were?
R: I think some group highs would be the hangout downtime when we relaxed our expectations and had fun being ourselves. All of us felt a lot of pressure with the project and of course wanted to showcase our best stuff. Finding unique spots was difficult as we all tended to be inspired by the same place.
L: I think a high for everyone was definitely the first days in Vienna. We were all still fresh and getting the first clips and watching them together realizing that we’re actually doing a pretty cool thing here was great. I think a low was Budapest. Everyone was pretty drained by then and we completely underestimated how big the city was and we hadn’t scouted it before so we were struggling with spots and trying to film everything the girls wanted to do which was sometimes on different ends of the city. There was definitely stuff that didn’t get filmed because of that.
“Watching them together realizing that we’re actually doing a pretty cool thing here was great”
What should folks expect going into the film?
R: I think people can look forward to a film that captures the insights into all the little details that go unnoticed during training, a piece that captures lifestyle and training mentality. So many people train and we all have our little quirks. I think this film will show that and hopefully help non-practitioners relate to us.
L: I’m honestly not 100% sure I haven’t seen all of the footage, it’s all with Toby [Segar] at the moment but the girls did some incredible things which completely exceeded any of my expectations. I think you can expect some good community vibes, a good look into how the whole trip went with all the highs and lows and our relationships with each other. I can’t wait to see what Toby does with the footage.
What do you want the takeaway to be? How do you hope people feel once they’ve seen the film?
R: That there are so many varieties of movement and each one is fucking cool in its own way.
My biggest hope is that it will get people talking and opening their horizons on movement potential. I [also] hope people will feel like they didn’t waste their money hahaha … No, but seriously I hope that people will walk away from the film feeling energized, ready to move, or with a better understanding of what it means to be someone that is passionate about parkour.
L: I hope people will see how incredibly strong the women in the sport are and I’m hoping it’ll give people who don’t necessarily do parkour an idea of what it’s like and why we do it. I also hope we’ll manage to inspire some girls and women to give parkour a try. And I really hope that the people who supported our kickstarter will feel like it was worth their money.
Who are some athletes people should keep an eye on going into 2024 and what event are you looking forward to the most this year?
R: There are too many haha. I’ve personally been inspired by watching Flora (UK), Zoe (Germany), and Louisa (Taiwan). I would love to go to HellJam in Finland! I’ve been once in the winter and loved it so I have to go back in summer haha.
L: Everyone involved in the project and then Lola Roy has been absolutely killing it lately. Some other names that come to mind are Zoe Kern, Agnes Cecilie and Miranda Tibbling and Lena (lele00037 on instagram, I don’t know her full name) but there’s honestly so many incredible women out there now that it’s very hard to just mention a few names.
I’m really looking forward to more training and less planning this year. Organizing Gatecrasher definitely took a lot of time and energy and I’m excited to just enjoy training over summer.
That’s it for this week’s newsletter! Thanks for reading and I can’t wait to share more updates with you all on Gatecrasher, Embrace Challenge: The Story Behind NYC’s Rooftop Parkour Festival, and Still Here feat. Davis Vasconcellos.
See you next week,
Max & Sean
Point A Parkour