Kilian Martin Joins Madars Apse For Red Bull’s ‘Skate Tales’
Red Bull‘s ‘Skate Tales’ series is a deep dive into the lesser-known subcultures in skateboarding—groups that just keep doing their own thing, whether we see it or not. The six-part exploration of this underground element, hosted by famous outlier Madars Apse, which takes you from Japan to the Ethiopian skate scene, continues today in Madrid, Spain, with Kilian Martin.
Martin hails from the Alcorcon neighbourhood in Madrid, Spain. Not long after he began his skating journey, Kilian discovered Powell Peralta’s legendary ‘Ban This’ video, which introduced him to freestyle skating. Freestyle was something with which Kilian could combine his gymnastic abilities, allowing him to get creative and do things that had never been done before. Spotted skating in Barcelona, Kilian was asked to fly to Paris for a fashion magazine shoot. Overnight, he became a skate sensation in the advertising world, filming dozens of commercials for some of the biggest names in luxury retail. In 2010, his life took another twist when he won the Freestyle Skateboarding World Cup in Germany and met Brett Novak, sparking a series of hugely successful and uniquely cinematic viral skate videos which established Kilian’s talent in the US. With the backing of his childhood idols from Powell Peralta and Vision, Kilian moved to the U.S.A. where he currently resides as a professional skater shooting ads for some of the biggest brands in the world. Kilian Martin took skateboarding’s most unfashionable genre and became a sensation in the commercial world outside of the skate industry’s reach. He is a self-made pro skater with an internet following measured in the millions. With a story like that, there was no way he wasn’t going to feature in Madars’s quest to explore skateboarding’s roads less travelled.
Watch the episode, above, and binge the rest of ‘Skate Tales’ season 2 at the Red Bull TV site.
Check out some of Apse’s projects with us over the years, and our recent work with Red Bull’s Bowl Rippers in Marseille, France, below:
