- Welcome to POV .
I'm Pete Schwaba, host of PBS Wisconsin's Director's Cut .
Tonight we bring you filmmaker Elegance Bratton's
gritty, insightful documentary, Pier Kids.
The Christopher Street Pier
in Manhattan's West Village of New York City
has long been a destination
for queer, transgender kids of color
who often times have been cast away
and have no place else to go.
In Pier Kids we follow three characters,
Casper, Desean, and Krystal
as they navigate day to day life
amid the homeless and impoverished.
To give you an idea of how marginalized
these characters feel and what they're up against,
Krystal is actually hoping to be infected with HIV
so the state will house him.
I'm always fascinated by how a filmmaker
finds a story or subject.
In the case of Bratton, he lived this story
just as his characters do.
Bratton was kicked out of the house by his mother
because he was gay.
Despite being homeless for ten years,
he felt at home on Christopher Street.
He calls this community in Manhattan
the most important area
in the history of gay liberation in the western world.
Documentarians often have film school or journalism
in their backgrounds.
Elegance Bratton learned much of what made him a director
in the U.S. Marine Corps,
where he trained as a combat camera specialist.
While researching this project,
I came across an old YouTube video
of Bratton's telling random stories of his experiences
on Christopher Street
while he was trying to raise money for this project.
At that time, his film was still just an idea.
But for Elegance Bratton,
persistence has paid off and his dream realized.
Pier Kids starts now on PBS Wisconsin,
your home for independent film.