Cooking Up a Storm

When indie flick Skate Kitchen debuted at Sundance Film Festival this year, it turned heads, not only because of its honest depiction of a New York all-girl skateboard crew, but because its female leads are the real deal – in the film, NYC posse The Skate Kitchen play fictional versions of themselves.

Their real-life story begins in 2016 with a chance encounter on the New York subway between Nina Moran and Rachelle Vinberg – two teenage skaters who had first met on YouTube – and film director Crystal Moselle, who was fresh from winning a Sundance Grand Jury Prize for her 2015 breakthrough documentary The Wolfpack. “We were on our way to skate in a park, and she told us she wanted to do a short film and asked if we knew any other girls that skate,” recalls Moran, now 21. “I knew Dede [Lovelace, 21] and Kabrina [Adams, 25] because I went to high school with them, and I knew the twins [Jules and Brenn Lorenzo, 20] from skating in Chelsea [NYC].” Add Ajani Russell, 21, to the mix, and the crew was born.

Moselle’s short film That One Day, created for fashion label Miu Miu’s Women’s Tales series, told a fictionalised story of a girl’s experience at a regular male-dominated skatepark, as seen through the eyes of Vinberg’s character. “We became The Skate Kitchen after that,” says Moran. “When I was young, I used to watch a lot of skate videos featuring girls,” says 20-year-old Vinberg. “And in the comments sections, guys would say, ‘She should be in the kitchen,’ or, ‘That’s a funny-looking kitchen,’ so we called our crew The Skate Kitchen to mock that term.”

Since then, the collective’s feminist approach of love, understanding and inclusivity – they skate with guys – has seen their profile explode. Vogue heralded them as “New York’s coolest all-girl skate crew”; Nike asked the girls to endorse its first female-only skate shoe; they collaborated with Pharrell on his G-Star RAW campaign, and The New York Times dubbed them “fashion’s favourite girl skateboarders”. It was only a matter of time before Hollywood came knocking, with Moselle taking the concept of her short film and writing it large.

In Skate Kitchen, Vinberg plays Camille, a 18-year-old Long Islander who takes up an Instagram invite to hang out with a female skate crew. Like That One Day, the film blurs the lines between documentary and fiction, with authentic conversations and language. “Although it’s scripted, it captures a lot of real shit about where we’re from and how things work,” says Moran. Early on in the film, Camille experiences a bad groin injury from her board, something the girls refer to as being “creditcarded”. “The way we speak in the movie is how we talk all the time,” says Vinberg. “Jayden [Smith, who plays Vinberg’s love interest] had the hardest time adapting to the way the dialogue was performed, because it’s not something he’s used to.”

Post-Sundance, Skate Kitchen is being spoken about in the same breath as classics such as Dazed and Confused and Larry Clark’s Kids, but for the crew it’s the message of inclusiveness that’s most important. “Girls are coming up to us at film festivals and telling us how much they appreciate it. Guys, too,” says Lovelace. The hope is that the film will inspire more girls to take up skating. “We encourage them to not be afraid to go into parks,” says Russell. “To try things that are usually male-dominated.” “That’s why The Skate Kitchen is so important,” adds Lovelace. “It opens the door to that dialogue. It gives an opportunity to people who didn’t have a voice; a chance to explore these areas without fear of being ostracised.” She could be referring to the film or the collective themselves: the recipe’s the same.

Skate Kitchen is in UK cinemas from September 28; skatekitchenfilm.com