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Film

Kids on the Boundaries

Saturday, Mar 5, 2011

7 p.m.

Additional Info

Deep End, Jerzy Skomilowski, 1970, 90 min., 35mm
Streetwise, Martin Bell, 1984, 91 min., HD video, director’s restored version
Pretty Baby, Louis Malle, 1978, 110 min., 35mm

Image: Martin Bell, Streetwise (still), 1984; photo: Mary Ellen Mark

Deep End
Set in the suburbs of London in the 1960s, Skomilowski’s film follows Mike, a fifteen year old dropout who finds a job at a public bath house. Over the course of his training, his older and beautiful coworker, Susan, becomes the object of his affection and lust; as his feelings grow from juvenile to adult, his desire leads him to walk the line between infatuation and obsession. Mike’s behavior grows increasingly erratic and disturbing — he even takes to following Susan, concealed by the evening’s darkness — and the film transitions from an innocent tale of young admiration to a dangerous romantic fixation. Print courtesy of Warner Brothers.

Streetwise
This documentary follows the lives of nine homeless teenagers in Seattle, Washington, focusing on a 14-year-old prostitute who goes by the name of Tiny. The movie was conceived when Bell’s wife, photographer Mary Ellen Mark, worked on a story for Life magazine titled “Streets of the Lost.” The film reveals the sad fact that even in Seattle, one of America’s most livable cities, there are still heartbreakingly young people who must fend for themselves in the streets. Director’s restored version courtesy of Martin Bell.

Pretty Baby
Set in Storyville, the red-light district of New Orleans, in 1917 during the last months of legal prostitution, Malle’s film takes us into Madame Nell’s upscale brothel and subsequently into the lives of Hattie and her 12-year-old daughter, Violet (played by a 12-year-old Brooke Shields). When photographer Ernest J. Bellocq – based loosely on real-life photographer E.J. Bellocq, whose photographic study of Storyville brothels and prostitutes earned him international recognition – enters the brothel one afternoon, his encounter with Hattie and Violet ignites an obsession with photographing Violet’s youthful beauty. In the wake of Nell arranging an auction for Violet’s virginity and Hattie’s relocation to St. Louis, Violet turns to Bellocq for reassurance but eventually discovers it within herself. The controversial film’s subject matter is softened by the camera lens, which seems to subtly occupy the perspective of Violet herself and thus visually reaffirms the themes of youth, desire, and coming of age. Print courtesy of Paramount Pictures.