British band Wild Beasts’ recently released music video for their song Alpha Male captures the evolving skateboarding scene for women in India.
The song, which is from their album Boy King, features India’s first professional female skater Atita Verghese and two Bengaluru-based all-girl skateboarding groups, Girl Skate India and Holystoked Skate Crew.
Shot by director Sasha Rainbow in Bengaluru, the video "celebrates everyone who takes the risk to be themselves".
"In places like Afghanistan, Cambodia, and India, skating has not been solidified as a male sport and therefore has had a massive cultural impact, teaching values about self-empowerment through skateboarding. Because of the current political climate in the West and attitudes of intolerance, and sexism across the world, I wanted to create a video that celebrates everyone who takes the risk to be themselves," Sasha said.
It is from her best friend that Sasha heard about the growing female skateboarding scene in India. "In order to really represent the theme, I needed to work with a group of women who were going against the grain through skateboarding. The other options I had could have endangered the girls I would work with. India seemed perfect as it is a wonderful blend of traditional and modern value systems," she told The Week in an interview.
The video has several moments where people stare at the skateboarders and the director said that crowds gathered wherever they went for shooting, and that all their looks were "100 per cent real."
The experience of shooting the video has deeply inspired Rainbow and she plans to return to India to make a documentary.
"It was really, really touching to know how hard all of those girls have had to fight the class system, sexism, all these things to actually be able to live that lifestyle and be a skateboarder in India," she told the BBC.
Watch the video here:
WILD BEASTS - ALPHA FEMALE from Sasha Rainbow on Vimeo.