Allen Dillard's movie Inter/State features plenty of kicks, ollies, and gravity-defying skateboard tricks courtesy of the thrashers living in Toledo, Cleveland, and Detroit.

Inter/State is Dillard’s tenth skateboarding feature and the approximately hour-long film will receive its Toledo premiere on Saturday at 8 p.m. at River East Gallery, located at 601 Main St. in East Toledo. 

The premiere will be accompanied by a one-night-only gallery showing of specially curated photos and paintings.

Dillard has been filming and producing his own series of skateboarding videos since 2010, making such films as Secret Society, a guerilla-style film following a series of skateboarders around Detroit.

The movie follows the skateboarding adventures and stunts of various skateboarders, including professional skateboarders Kristian Svitak and Scott Bankey, who lives in Dearborn, Mich.

Others that contributed to the project, which was filmed over several years beginning in 2018, include Ed Simpson, Zach Russell, Ryan Schendel, and Steve Regish. 

Bankey has been skating for close to two decades and said that he considers skateboarding to be more of an art form than a sport.

“The cool thing is there’s so many different ways to approach it. It’s much more like a artform versus like a general sport like football or basketball. That’s what lured me to skating in the first place.”

Bankey and Dillard met each other while hanging out in Elizabeth Park in Trenton, Mich., which is where Dillard is from. To date, the duo have filmed four skate videos together. 

Bankey manages a print shop in Dearborn when he’s not skating and at one point even marketed his own line of skateboards called American Antique.

“(The skateboards) didn’t pay the bills like a job with a conventional company,” said Bankey with a laugh.

Skate videos have a long and interesting history documenting a vibrant American subculture. 

They go back to the mid-1960s when underground movies like Skaterdater began depicting the rise of skating in its birthplace of southern California. 

“Skate videos” formally began to appear in the 1980s thanks to Powell Peralta, a skateboard company that would make and release VHS highlight tapes of professional skaters using their equipment, and then release them through their California shops. 

Powell established, through early videos like The Bones Brigade Video Show which sold tens of thousands of copies, several hallmarks of the genre, including length (30-60 minutes), the “ender” (a particularly impressive trick which ends the video, in Inter/State’s case a jump and long ride down a metal slope), “slam sections” (depicting skaters not landing tricks and falling), the use of the fisheye camera lens/effect, and the use of Sony DCR-VX1000 camcorders, popular since the 1990s and utilized for Inter/State, which often give the videos a lo-fi aesthetic. 

Notably, filmmaker Spike Jonze, known for his work on Her, Adaptation, and Being John Malkovich, got his start in filmmaking by making skate videos in the early 1990s for World Industries. 

Such videos are also known for their use of music, and are often divided into song length segments. 

Inter/State features tunes like the Rolling Stones’ 1971 classic “Wild Horses” and alt-rocker Ty Segall’s 2018 cover of “Every 1’s a Winner.”  

Inter/State’s main star is Svitak, a pro skateboarder who has been sponsored over the years by such noted companies as Vans and Black Label Skateboards. A native of Cleveland, Svitak divides his times between Ohio and San Diego, where he also owns a home. 

Svitak has been featured in Thrasher magazine “countless” times, according to the 49-year old skater. He’s been tagged on the cover and had his photo featured prominently on the contents page, but alas, he has yet to get a photo on the cover of Thrasher.

Svitak has been skating professionally since 1999 and Dillard was a longtime fan of his skating techniques. According to Svitak, Dillard sent him a private message on Instagram and professed to be a big fan. He noticed that Svitak was skating in Cleveland and Allen asked him if he could photograph him in Cleveland while he skated.

Svitak admitted that he “blew off” Dillard at first, but the skating filmmaker was persistent.

“I recognized that Allen’s heart was in the right place,” said Svitak. “So I told him I was flattered and gave him the green light. Allen was a really cool guy and we filmed a little bit and that’s turned into a friendship.”

Svitak and Allen are working on a video with a company out of Youngstown called Stuck In Ohio — a media company that’s doing a documentary on Svitak. “I’m the pro skater who went to California, so they want to make a documentary on me,” said Svitak.

As for director Dillard, he’s been skating for more than 20 years. While living in Trenton, Dillard would often go to Detroit or Toledo to skate and film footage. He learned how to skateboard in 2001 and around that time his parents gave him a hand-held camera. Inspired by such classic skateboard videos such as Bam Margera’s CKY series, Dillard began filming himself and his friends performing skate tricks. 

Dillard often films at locations that have sentimental value to the skateboarders and his videos feature long, loving shots of city architecture. 

“I want to make the areas we skate in look as cool as possible,” said Dillard. “It’s a love letter to those cities.”

First Published February 6, 2025, 1:00 p.m.