Video picks: Crystal Moselle - That One Day

Crystal Moselle’s short film for the fashion house is where we were first introduced to The Skate Kitchen crew. ‘That one day’ is essentially the nucleus of an idea that evolved into ‘Skate Kitchen’ with the director introducing the main characters, tone and themes. Crystal talks about “doing all her projects in reverse”, in that she tends to find a group of people she’s interested in and then “builds a project around them”. When Miu Miu approached her to make a film for their series, she knew The Skate Kitchen crew should be the focus so she could shed light on this underground community and empower female skaters.

As a director, she considers her work to be a collaboration with her young and mainly unknown cast – and the resulting film a documentation of their time together. After meeting on the subway Crystal and The Skate Kitchen crew workshopped ideas for the script and the story of the film. Crystal’s films have a raw authenticity to them, thanks to this way of working. In ‘That one day’ we see this collide with the ethereal and dreamlike shots of the crew in stunning Miu Mui outfits as they skate the ramps.

Want to see more?

Watch other films in Miu Miu’s Women’s Tales series
Explore more of Crystal’s work on Vimeo
The Skate Kitchen and Rachelle Vinberg take their spots in the Dazed 100 list

‘Skate Kitchen’ is released in the UK on 28 September 2018 so we’ll be able to see how the story developed from original plot of ‘That one day’. But these are not the first films Crystal’s made with groups of young people. Her breakthrough hit, ‘The Wolfpack’, introduced us to a family of seven home-schooled brothers who learned about the world through blockbuster films and recreated their favourite scenes in home-made costumes. It’s a mesmerising example of Crystal’s commitment to telling the story of overlooked communities and an extraordinary example of how you can use the format of documentaries to tread the line between reality and fantasy.