"POINT B" - New Documentary by Michael Alosi

[SafeNSure]

Director and Filmmaker Michael Alosi put in a lot of time and energy in making this film and met with a multitude of communities & individuals across the globe (meet them all here: http://pointbmovie.com/Meet.html)

Watch and tell him what you think of his documentary at the links below.

- Watch: http://pointbmovie.com/Watch.html
- Discuss: http://pointbmovie.com/Discuss.html

[Chris]

I will probably do an audio interview with Michael Alosi about the film. If you have any questions that you'd like answered in the interview you can post them in this thread or here

http://pointbmovie.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=5

[M1K3Y]

i just watched this, and i thought it had really good information. if someone wants to start getting into parkour or freerunning, i think they should watch this doc. to get a better understanding of what we do

[kingtheking]

this documentary was really good. i liked how it traveled all around the world showing differing perspectives on the seperate issues like commercilization and competition.

[Philosofist]

Very good information, a lot of light shed on the controversy over competition and commercialization. But I just think commercializing it will turn freerunning or parkour into the next skateboarding, I want it to be an artform used everyday, everywhere, not in a "parkour park". There is a sense of purity that needs to be preserved with our art. And I don't want competition to lead to any rules, a major aspect of the art is the free interpretation, the ability to say what it is to you, how you view it, and why you do. Keep it free and pure, just because other trends have comemcrialized it doesn't mean we have to follow the same path. If it does, I'll call parkour something else, it's not the name that matters.

[Tallbear]

yea, i completely agree; a Parkour park would be lame as hell lol. I like how they talked a little about the philosophy behind what we do as well, most of us dont just jump of things to look cool, or get the ladies (added bonus?), but because if we can overcome the obstacles in front of us whether its a wall, fence, etc. or the obstacles in our minds (fear, doubts, etc.), then we can find a path over an obstacle that we come across in our lives. "No Parkour" signs scare me >_< those will just give the police another reason to get me

[Tallbear]

:O that guy with the white hat i think mentioned the russian climbing video, that's the same video that got me hyped for my first beginner jam too. Ill sometimes listen to the songs from it b4 going out to practice, to remind me of the excitement and eagerness to learn and train parkour. If its not already posted on here, i'd recommend u look it up on youtube.

[Philosofist]

I have one of those on my ipod. I like getting hyped up for them too. This is pretty good, it's a bit more up to date than Parkour Pilgrimage, and has a bit more energy in the narration, but Parkour Pilgrimage is a more straight forward documentary meant for guiding people.

[Kirill]

I enjoyed this as a film, it was well made- and it did touch on the concepts i desired it too. was also very open minded....

i agree with Mizu (Gene)

[Fyrel]

That was top notch quality; it was surprisingly neutral, giving equal importance to all viewpoints. The footage was nicely edited, it showed enough parkour as to not bore the viewer, but enough of the people getting interviewed to get the emotion across. Showing the international side of parkour and interviewing traceurs from all different countries was quite a feat and shows a lot of dedication to the project. The comparison to other sports and physical disciplines was a nice touch too. It would be a great way for beginning traceurs who are interested in the more philisophical aspects of parkour to catch up to everything.

[Seng]

I found this documentary to be rather pedestrian and forgettable. It touched on a bunch of ideas in parkour but didn't seem to want to go in depth into anything, raise new questions or provide new insights. It felt like skimming internet forums but cutting out most of the really good posts. I also think it was very trick-oriented and did very little to get into the heart of parkour, ie the internal development of the practitioner. Most of the extended movement sequences could have been cut down or totally cut out (night time run, Team Vayne [are they even freerunning- they seem more tricking than anything], other sports flow) and the film would have been better for it. My basic measure of a film on any subject is whether it makes me want to do it or gets me asking questions about it and this film did neither.

I also kept wondering- watching the video and looking at the list of participants- where are the women? Where are other minorities? Where is anyone over 30? Aside from the early section with the filmmaker's mom (which seemed more like a show of her fitness than diversity in the sport), the film felt very limited in its cultural diversity and did nothing to question why. Given that they traveled all over the world to interview people, I'm surprised there wasn't even a mention of the growing female representation in many cities (or maybe this could have been presented as yet another obstacle, but in a way I'm not surprised that the filmmaker didn't even consider it).

Kaos, I don't think I'm going to register on the Point B forum to post these questions, but could you ask about them- minority representation in the film and in the sport (I realize it's not entirely the director's fault and that we have an anomalously diverse community here) and if he considered covering one aspect of the culture more in depth as opposed to being so broad in his coverage?

[SafeNSure]

(hehehe... we all took the time to watch this before the week end...)

I prefer to reply to Seng's post than making one of my own, because they are tightly related.

#1: I agree with all emotions that Seng described: slightly superficial, fascination with the tricking and drilling mentality, weak/unnecessary comparison with other disciplines, lack of description of mental aspect, unimpressive show of diversity...
I'll get back to this later.

#2 I must say that I've also highly appreciated (as everybody before Messenger33) the obvious time and resources put into this, the neutrality (even if a bit lukewarm?), the effort of featuring a spectrum (not "the"...), going from the playground kids to the co-founder and their academies, and running across 4 continents (with big, yet understandable gaps: eastern europeans/former soviets, middle-easterns/africans, latin-americans... practitioners that we do see online).

To #1 I have to say: this is a production directed to non-traceurs (unlike, i.e. Pilgrimage), it covers the basics, and summarizes well most of the obstacles that new practitioners take months to discover (even telling them about those they would be better of non discovering... you pick which one among definition, conflict with modern lifestyles, globalization, commercialization, danger, competition, need of flow).
But it completely fails in suggesting solutions; maybe because it didn't want to, but I suspect because it didn't catch the essence of what parkour has become, and in a more limited form has always been: a communal effort.
It stops with putting together the knowledge that can be collected on the 4/5 most 'prestigious' pk online forums around the world and going to their jams interviewing some top honchos...

Then again, I must admit that those unsatisfactory feelings came after watching it the first time.
After letting it sit for a couple of days (and especially while participating to a very vivid national discussion about competition and commercialization going on these days), I came to realize the strong value of this documentary for me: and it is that it doesn't matter...

That I like pretty much everybody featured there, even if I strongly dislike some statements expressed and also some behaviors, but that's ok... because I'm part of the pk community that I belong to and THAT'S all that matters.

We cannot be all the same, we don't want to be all the same, and we don't have to be! Let's keep on celebrating our differences, to strongly, but amicably discuss it, agree that we disagree, if we do, and go part paths.

I feel even more motivated to help grow this community, the way we want it, and share it with whoever wants to try it... even if it would lead to "point C".

A movie is a movie, it will never capture your feelings, or completely represent them; we would all probably achieve and enrich our parkour significantly more with a single training session in a different community, oversea, or just over the hill, even with the less likable of the featured athletes here, if so they'd be, but that would take more than 66 minutes.

For being a non traceur, Alosi's own and captured feelings featured in the movie are frankly good enough...
;)

[Philosofist]

Yup, pedestrian and good information for fresh never before trained tracuers. But was it made to inform tracuers? I mean we do know most of the information already. I do very much appreciate as Giorgio said the effort, it was great to see the worldwide footage. I'd really enjoy an entire documentary dedicated to women in parkour more.