CRYSTAL MOSELLE SHINES A SPOTLIGHT ON FEMALE SKATERS

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The filmmaker and documentarian Crystal Moselle approaches her work like a sixteenth-century Renaissance painter. She immerses herself in her subjects for extended periods of time and doesn’t begin the portrait until she is hyper-aware of every curve of their figures and every shadow that is cast upon them. The final results are illuminating—her films are always centered around fully formulated, four-dimensional characters with a singular vision and point of view.

This initially became clear in 2015 in Moselle’s breakout documentary The Wolfpack, which serves as a master class in the power of observation. Through her lens, viewers are introduced to the Angulo brothers, a group of cinema-crazed boys with plenty of imagination, strengthened by their confinement in their family’s small apartment. By chance, Moselle stumbled upon the boys while walking down First Avenue on one of their rare days outside. Taken by their distinctive appearance, she approached them and discovered that their story was even more captivating than their unique exterior.

As in all other cases, Moselle let her instincts guide her towards new material. “I always just happen to stumble upon it,” she says. “I let the spontaneity of life sort of take me.” While riding the subway one day, she noticed a group of quirky young girls. It wasn’t their colorful personas or outfits that drew her in at first—it was their skateboards. She soon learned that the group of girls was not casual about the sport; they were serious enough to have formed a collective called The Skate Kitchen in order to establish a female-centric community for skaters.

That chance meeting with the collective led to “That One Day,” a video short for Miu Miu’s Women’s Tales project. Tasked with finding a subject that showcased the power of femininity, the collective was a clear choice for the director. Moselle’s final piece highlights the struggles female skaters endure when they approach the skatepark on their own. Through the camaraderie of the collective, the skaters are able to overcome the rampant sexism that prevails. The film won over Sundance viewers with its daring perspective and soon after, Moselle set out to extend the story into a full-length narrative project.

The result is Skate Kitchen, a coming-of-age story that explores gender, sexuality, friendship, and family through the lens of New York City’s skate scene. Abandoning the confines of her comfort zone of well-developed documentaries, shorts, and commercials, Moselle instead opts to use fiction to explore reality. She immersed herself in the girls’ world and then proceeded to draft a script using the real experiences of the eponymous collective as inspiration. She then assigned the skaters each a role that was based on, she says, “a version of themselves at one point in their life.”

By using real skaters in her story, Moselle lends a new level of authenticity to the film. The characters are vibrant without ever becoming unbelievable. Nina Moran gives a standout performance as Kurt, a spunky lesbian who is proud of her identity and not afraid to kick anyone’s ass if they challenge her or her friends. Rachelle Vinberg leads the narrative with an understated portrayal of Camille, a shy skater who is struggling to find her identity due to the overwhelming loneliness of her existence. The story follows Camille as she integrates herself into the collective and their downtown playground, and later falls out of their graces due to her involvement with a rival male crew led by Devon, played by Jaden Smith, an icy cool videographer with a knack for friendzoning the girls he woos with his effortless charisma.

As one of the few real actors on the set, Smith, who was already friends with Vinberg before this project, was ironically tasked with a greater challenge: playing the part of Devon so well that it didn’t seem like he was playing a part at all. To help him accomplish this, Moselle made sure he was deeply familiar with the other skaters and their stomping ground. “I told him, ‘If you want to do this film, you got to come hang out with us in New York and really cruise around with us and be there with us in their world,’” she recalls. The result is a film that delicately toes the line between reality and fantasy with characters that feel like old friends.

What makes the characters even more authentic is their accessibility. The cast is extremely diverse, with people of color, women, LGBTQ characters, and individuals from lower-class families. The variety is representative of skate culture at large, but it also pays homage to the unique setting in which the film takes place: the streets of New York. “New York is incredibly diverse,” Moselle says. “It attracts so many different people.”

This sort of diversity has been noticeably absent from dominant skate narratives hitherto. The majority of skate films are set in prototypical West Coast locales, featuring bleach blond teenage boys. Skate Kitchen flips the script, showcasing a diverse East Coast perspective that is largely centered around female narratives. While the film delves into the minutiae of female life (i.e. tampons, crushes, puberty, etc.), it also tackles the larger existential issues female skaters face. The girls have to rush to the park early in the morning to stake out their own territory since the boys won’t share. Walking down the street, onlookers assume their skateboards are accessories, not a form of transportation.

Moselle, well aware of the casual sexism in the skate world, reflects, “It’s intimidating and all eyes are you when you’re a woman and you’re entering the skate park.” The beautiful thing about the film is that it provides visibility for girls who may be scared to pursue the sport. Moselle confirms that the film has had a tremendous effect on viewers already: “It’s incredible to see how much they’ve inspired women from around the world.” I can’t help but think I would have overcome my own fears of skating with the neighborhood boys if this movie had been around when I was younger.

Skate Kitchen also coincides with the rising wave of female empowerment, as seen in recent social waves like #MeToo and #TimesUp. “We shot the film before the whole #MeToo movement happened,” Moselle explains. “It was just kismet. I think it’s the zeitgeist right now: women coming into their own power and taking back over.” While female representation may be increasing on screens, there is still a discrepancy behind the lens. Moselle laments how, despite the growing number of female directors, the distribution and acquisition of female-directed films is still lacking. The result is that female characters are often created and directed by men. “Sometimes they don’t get it right,” she says. “They’re like, ‘Oh it’s a film with all women it!’ But if it’s directed in a very sexualized way from a male perspective, then it’s not a film about women.”

Moselle’s perspective as a female in a male-dominated industry lends itself well to the film, reflected in Camille’s transformation from a lonely outsider to a member of a strong community of female skaters. While social media may have been a powerful tool for her to discover this community, she doesn’t undergo real growth until she ventures out to meet them in person. “It’s based on that one day that you have a real shift and everything kind of changes,” Moselle explains, “and you open up your eyes to the world and you see things differently.”

For Camille, that day comes when she meets the crew. Later, when the girls mob down the grimy street of New York, they pass by a little girl who watches them in awe. This might be her special day. For some female audience members, their day might come when they see the film and begin to realize their own potential to shatter patriarchal notions of what women are capable of.

When Moselle is asked to select her “one day,” she comes up short. There are surely several options Moselle could easily pinpoint as instrumental to her overall trajectory, but she isn’t quick to grab on to any particular one. Maybe this is because her day is still to come. With this dynamic and diverse story full of eye-opening cinéma vérité moments, her status as a filmmaker is sure to rise to new heights. Like the streets of New York, which she shoots with such poetic zeal, she is full of untapped potential. For Moselle, every ramp, sidewalk, and construction zone is a chance for a kickflip towards success.

Skate Kitchen is out now.