Film Screening: Streetwise

After a successful first film screening in September, C/O Berlin is once again presenting the film Streetwise in cooperation with Yorck Kinos in the neighbouring delphi LUX cinema.

The film screening is part of the exhibition Mary Ellen Mark . Encounters and provides insight into the genesis of Mary Ellen Mark's award-winning portrait series Streetwise and Tiny: Streetwise Revisited, which can be seen at C/O Berlin from Sep 16, 2023 until Jan 18, 2024. Both works illustrate Mark's ongoing commitment to telling the story of Erin Charles, who was thirteen years old when they first met, and known as Tiny. Mark began the project when Tiny was living on the streets and continued photographing her and eventually her ten children over the following thirty years.

Film info
Seattle, 1983. Taking their camera to the streets of what was supposedly America’s most livable city, filmmaker Martin Bell, photographer Mary Ellen Mark, and journalist Cheryl McCall set out to tell the stories of those society had left behind: homeless and runaway teenagers living on the city’s margins. Born from a Life magazine reportage by Mark and McCall, Streetwise follows an unforgettable group of at-risk children—including iron-willed fourteen-year-old Tiny, who would become the project’s most haunting and enduring face, along with the pugnacious yet resourceful Rat and the affable drifter DeWayne—who, driven from their broken homes, survive by hustling, panhandling, and dumpster diving. Granted remarkable access to their world, the filmmakers craft a devastatingly frank, nonjudgmental portrait of lost youth growing up far too soon in a world that has failed them.