(2018, 90 minutes, world premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival).
The film follows Teri Rogers and Tiahna Vince, a lesbian couple trying to survive on the streets while struggling with alcoholism, mental illness and prison stays.
In person: CalArts alums Alina Skrzeszewska (director) and Kelly Parker (producer); Teri Rogers (protagonist).
Variety: What is it that draws you to Skid Row, an area most Angelenos make an effort to avoid?
Skrzeszewska: I’ve been trying to answer this question for the past 12 years, ever since I first started hanging out there. It’s a very weird place, full of chaos. I like to create out of chaos. Anybody who’s ever seen my studio can attest to that. I identify with the theme of displacement that’s a motive in people’s lives on Skid Row. The area is a kind of refuge, a home for people who had to leave their home or never really had one to begin with. People there recognize each other in their suffering. And it’s a place where people who are routinely marginalized can feel accepted. Skid Row is presented as this terrible place, something like the worst place in America, but it’s not Skid Row that’s the problem. It’s the conditions of our society that make a place like Skid Row possible.
The screening is free and open to the entire Institute.
Alina Skrzeszewska was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1977. Her family emigrated to West Germany and she grew up in Munich. She studied stage design, art and media at the Berlin University of the Arts and film and video at the California Institute of the Arts. From 2007 to 2008 she lived in a hotel on Skid Row in Los Angeles. Her first feature-length documentary Songs from the Nickel screened at international festivals and won a number of awards.
Filmography
2002 The Scent of the Sky; short - 2006 Stories of a Promised Land – part 1; short - 2009 Last One Left; short - 2010 Songs from the Nickel; documentary - 2013 Traviesos; documentary - 2018 Game Girls; documentary.