2018 NEXT Section Sundance Trading Card Series: #22. Crystal Moselle (Skate Kitchen)

Eric Lavallee: Name me three of your favorite “2017 discoveries”.
Crystal Moselle: #1. I have been a fan of Nicolas Jaar for many years, but this year I had the chance to see him live for the first time. It felt like every note and moment of his show was speaking to every cell in my body. It was a spiritual experience. I went two more times that week and it helped me figure out a new project that I will start on this coming year.

#2. Sophia the Robot from Hanson Robotics was a really cool discovery for me this year. I am obsessed with this idea of this idea of the future being now.

#3. Timothee Chalamet is one hell of an actor in Call Me By Your Name.

Lavallee: If I had to describe the Moselle aesthetic/method to anyone I’d call it Wiseman meets David Attenborough anthropologist/filmmaker. Would you say that your modi operandi is mostly to help you build your character set, guide you through a subculture or help establish a truth, a sort of zero-false-notes currency?
Moselle: I go completely from my gut. I am first drawn in by the personalities of my subjects, then the story builds itself around them. I actually didn’t know the back story of the Wolfpack before I met them, I just thought they were incredibly charismatic human beings and I wanted to help them. I am very collaborative with my subjects and my new perspective in filmmaking is to not play by any traditional rules. I just want to go with what I feel.

Lavallee: I would like to know not your first a-ha moment in terms of you deciding to make a feature length film on this crew set, but how did you come to decide to build your tale around the character that Rachelle would play? How was this a way into the story you were looking to tell?
Moselle: I met Rachelle and Nina on a train. I have learned to trust this inner instinct when a project presents itself to me. It’s an attraction that I can’t deny. I can feel the vibe. I started meeting with Nina and Rachelle and began talking about their lives. THey had such a unique perspective and we had a really nice way of interacting. I had still planned to make a feature documentary after the short but two things happened that changed my perspective. The first thing was I saw this Polish film called “All These Sleepless Nights“, that blurred the lines between documentary and fiction. This film completely inspired me because it reminded me that there are no rules. I was walking through the streets of Wroclaw late at night after the screening and I was thinking about my film with the girls and I stopped at this beautiful statue of a young dancer girl. Something about the image at night and the innocence that embodied this young girl… i don’t know why but i had an epiphany that i had to make this film with The Skate Kitchen in a way that was more collaborative and not a traditional documentary. The second thing that happened was the short got loads of attention and it was very easy to get support for the feature.

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