Skate Kitchen
From The Director of The Wolfpack
Followers of the indie scene know Crystal Moselle well; the director made waves with her debut documentary, The Wolfpack, a documentary about the Angulo siblings. This unique group of young people spent their lives trapped inside family’s New York City apartment and became obsessed with cinema, using film as an escape from their domineering patriarch.
Now, Moselle is back with her first-ever non-documentary feature film, Skate Kitchen, which earned strong reviews at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. An remake/expansion of her short film, That One Day (seen above), Skate Kitchen is a drama set in the real-life New York subculture of female skater kids, based on the real-life Skate Kitchen group, who play fictionalized versions of themselves It’s been decade time since iconic skate movies like Thrashin‘ and Gleaming the Cube, but skateboarding is still relevant to the many corners of today’s counter-culture scene, and a satisfying escape from the pressures of societal expectations.
The film stars a group of real-life skate girls-turned-actors, and focuses on a core group of rebellious young girls who love skateboarding, offering a different perspective on the the streetwise hobby, which is primarily viewed by the world at large as a male-dominated activity. As such, Skate Kitchen offers a view of a marginalized community within a marginalized community, and how the bonds of friendship can become even stronger under the strains of multiple layers of adversity.