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With her debut feature documentary film Queens of Concrete, Eliza Cox takes audiences on a seven year journey with three skateboarders: Ava Godfrey, Charlotte Heath, and Hayley Wilson. They each embrace a different style of skateboarding, with street and park being the two styles that are featured at the Tokyo and Paris Olympics. It's that 2020 Olympics that the girls have their sights set on, with Eliza following their journey from the skateparks of Melbourne to the sponsored events in London and LA, to boarding schools dedicated to bringing up the next generation of skaters.
There's an inherent drama to skateboarding - you never know if the skater is going to fall, what they're going to pull off, and how they're going to take a risky jump - and that's paired well with the inherent drama of being a teenager turning into an adult. Or, in the case of Charlotte, a kid turning into a teenager. Each of the girls has their own life journey to follow, and Eliza's dedicated observational lens follows them in a caring and considered manner. This is not a director simply documenting the lives of their subjects, but supporting their journey in an empathetic manner.
Queens of Concrete moves in the same vein as the great skating docos of the turn of the millennium, with Eliza noting the impact that Dogtown and Z-Boys had on her work. As a viewer, I couldn't help but feel the pull of Eddie Martin's excellent All This Mayhem, a film which also hails from the streets of Melbourne. Either way, the impact of sports documentaries is a strong one on Eliza's creative vision.
I caught up with Eliza ahead of the AIDC panel Levelling the Playing Field: Celebrating Trailblazers in Sports Docs, where she joins fellow documentarians Frances Elliott, who co-directed Renee Gracie: Fireproof, and Marlee Silva, of the upcoming film Skin in the Game. In the following interview, we talk about her journey into filmmaking, what it means to be a supportive director, the choice behind making a sports film about girls or a film about girls who skate, and a lot more.
If you're in Naarm-Melbourne this weekend, then make yourself known and head along to ACMI on Monday 3 March where you can catch Levelling the Playing Field, alongside a stack more great panels and events at the Australian International Documentary Conference.
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