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Trick Shots
Brown Bag
In Brown Bag, Ari Marcopoulos and a gang of East Coast skaters take to the streets of Manhattan. The Dutch-American photographer, a longtime fixture as visual chronicler of the New York underground, shot his 8mm footage back in 1993, but only rediscovered the grainy time capsule during the COVID pandemic, wrapped in a brown paper bag. With this found footage, he pieced together a joyride in which legends such as Harold Hunter and Justin Pierce cruise carefree through the busy traffic, making use of every curb, ledge and rail they can find.
Marcopoulos delivers unpretentious black-and-white cinema here, drawing on all the hallmarks of a true skate film. Through low-angle shots and fisheye lenses, the former assistant to Andy Warhol and Irving Penn proves himself an improvisational force, his camera following the skaters wherever they go. This also leads him to The Banks, the legendary skate spot under the Brooklyn Bridge, where Larry Clark would later recruit a large part of his cast for Kids (1995), including Hunter and Pierce.
Bio Ari Marcopoulos
Born in 1957 in Amsterdam, Ari Marcopoulos moved to New York in 1980. The Big Apple highly influenced his work as a photographer and director. He started his career as an assistant to Andy Warhol, photographed Jean-Michel Basquiat on numerous occasions, and worked alongside Irving Penn. These early influences can be felt in his later work: intimate and sensitive portraits of skateboard culture and the music underground.