Meet the nine members of Brooklyn’s Skaters & Thieves crew in this 23 minute documentary filmed by Jeremy Rubier and AD Jennings aka 3rd Culture Kids. From their home base at the Brooklyn Museum to familiar spots like Skate Brooklyn or Homage TF the crew allows an inside look into their lives and close brotherhood through friendship, music, art and of course skateboarding.

Directors: Jeremy Rubier and AD Jennings
DOP: Jeremy Rubier
B Camera: AD Jennings
Editor: Jeremy Rubier
Sound design: Sean Carter
Music by: Basement Sound/Thunderous Caption/Alven HD

 

Synopsis

Skaters & Thieves is a short-documentary shot and edited by Montreal filmmakers Jeremy Rubier and AD Jennings (3rd Culture Kids) when they were visiting Brooklyn for a corporate project. During their visit in New York, their contract ended up being cancelled, and they had nothing else planned during their stay to look forward to. While visiting a local skate shop, they met a couple of local skateboarders and got introduced to the Skaters & Thieves collective and ended up following them around, shooting the whole thing on a $0 budget. This unplanned experienced became a project that was larger than life, and that deserved to see the light of day.

In contrast to traditional documentary, Skaters & Thieves gives the audience an inside look at the lives of individuals that are shaping the next generation of skaters and black culture within the city life of Brooklyn, New York. The guys invited both filmmakers to capture the entire experience of the daily lives of these Skaters & Thieves in an unobtrusive way, which gives the documentary a certain edge you won’t be able to watch anywhere else.

Skaters & Thieves is not just a clever moniker, it’s a lifestyle. The 9 individuals that make up the crew are part of this collective of new-wave skateboarders. Contrary to everyone’s initial belief, this isn’t a competition amongst different skateboarders, or a matters of who’s wearing what, but a symbiotic relationship between individuals that don’t even realize how cool they are in the first place. They’ve built their own culture, from the ground up, in and around Brooklyn. They are 9 of the most upfront, care-free, no-bullshit type of people who share the same passion around skating and thieving. Whether they are going to the shop, a stroll, or to go pick up something, each and every one of them end up stopping by the Eastern Parkway Brooklyn Museum, which is now a spot they all call their own.

Without even noticing how much they were actually filming, both Jeremy and AD were able to capture the real social and cultural aspects of the daily lives of these kids as they occurred without attempting to manipulate or impose their own perspectives onto such portrayals, which makes the whole thing as real as it gets.