‘Soleil Levant‘ means Rising Sun in French so the title of Magenta’s latest video is testament to the Frenchmen’s respect for Japanese culture.
It also makes sense that skateboarding and production is split half and half between Vivien Feil, Leo Valls, Soy Panday, Yoan Taillander (filmer) representing France, and Takahiro Morita, Koichiro Uehara, Far East Skate Network and the Tightbooth Production crew representing Japan.
Let’s not forget the Americans Jimmy Lannon and Zach Lyons who complete the circle and the myriad of friends who support Magenta too. As a result this video paints an incredibly lively picture of eclectic skateboarding and editing techniques.
I won’t be wrong when I say the general aesthetic of Soleil Levant is not everyone’s cup of tea. Quirky powerslides, rapid-fire ollies and switch indy grabs in the street are not what a vast majority of skateboarders would consider groundbreaking tricks by today’s standard of stunts performed on a board, but it’s still great skateboarding. In a culture in constant pursuit of pushing the physical and mental boundaries of what can be done when a human decides to step on a plank and four wheels, it isn’t hard to feel jaded by yesterday’s headline act when you are eager for that next fix of adrenaline.
Fortunately French and Japanese culture has been thriving for centuries before urethane and VX1000’s existed. Music, art, food, fashion are all areas the French and Japanese excel at so when it comes to skateboarding it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they view things differently from the rest of us. For starters Soleil Levant is broken down into different chapters that each carry a specific message or idea through the editing and skateboarding.
Rising East Shining West plays upon the duality of Jimmy Lannon and Zach Lyons’ skating by interspersing their tricks with clips of martial artists carefully crafting and mastering their techniques. Sometimes the simplest things can be beautiful but deadly at the same time. Then you have recent guest board representative Takahiro Morita talking about his recent trip to Paris. He skates us through the city but not to all the regular spots skateboarders would recognize, but instead a clearly defined route that a regular tourist might take to enjoy the splendors of the city. The Louvre, Opéra or Eiffel Tower are all spots worth visiting. There aren’t any big rails or killer marble ledges on display, just streets, curb cuts and man hole covers but that’s more than plenty for Takahiro to get to work on. The whole thing played out by Mozart’s K.297 alias the Paris Symphony.
Finally there’s Leo Valls, Soy Panday and Vivien Feil introduced by an archive reel of infamous French film director Jean Renoir, son of Pierre-Auguste Renoir a key figure of the Impressionist painting movement. The link between the Magenta squad and the Renoir legacy is that they don’t see their trade as something that can be packaged and labeled definitively, instead they aim to spark a personal interpretation or emotion within people with their work. If you break everything down to pure technique then there is no longer place for imagination, be it with cooking, cinema or skateboarding.
Those are three of the six chapters (not including bonus sections) delivered by Magenta to your cerebral cortex. Downloading a bootleg copy of this video will not do you justice. You need to own a physical copy and read the linear notes that accompany the DVD. As such, Soleil Levant is a thinking man’s skateboard video. It’s a bold stance to take but it’s very necessary when you realize just how bland and predictable the skateboard industry can be when it tries to capture, package and sell our culture back to us. In the end it’s just makes a mockery of itself.
If I had to describe Soleil Levant in three words I’d say intellectual, artistic and independent. I don’t think the Magenta boys or their supporters would mind, and as the saying goes “Those who matter don’t mind and those who mind don’t matter”.
Ralph Lloyd-Davis