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The Rink 2012

Recommended

Distributed by Sarah Friendland
Produced by Sarah Friedland, Ryan Joseph
Directed by Sarah Friedland
DVD , color, 54 min.



College - General Adult
Documentaries, Recreation, Social Behavior, Urban Areas

Date Entered: 06/11/2015

Reviewed by Maureen Puffer-Rothenberg, Valdosta State University, Valdosta, GA

New Jersey’s Branch Brook Park Roller Rink is a touchstone for Newark’s residents, many of whom have been roller skaters since childhood. In The Rink director Sarah Friedland looks at Branch Brook’s role in its community and particularly in the lives of two Branch Brook regulars: African American “gospel skater” Gralen and Caucasian roller-derby skater Bone Saw.

Roller skating is important in this urban community. When Branch Brook patrons tell how they learned to skate, they refer to their “home” or “birthright” rinks. Skill on the roller rink is so highly valued that “someone who looks like a regular Black guy” with smooth moves can be a neighborhood hero of sorts on skate night.

Bone Saw is an electrician, a successful professional in a male-dominated field where she has coped with stereotyping and sexual harassment. Unconventional in appearance and aggressive in attitude, she found acceptance and admiration as part of Branch Brook’s Monday-night roller derby team. Her team skates following Monday night gospel skates, when skating serves as an expression of worship for patrons like Gralen who skate to Christian music. Friedland uses scenes from Gralen’s and Bone Saw’s home lives and interweaves their stories to show similarities (both have been drug users and have had brushes with the law) and differences (Gralen is now clean and a family man; Bone Saw is in a relationship but remains quite an iconoclast).

Friedland covers a lot of ground here, providing in addition to personal profiles of Bone Saw and Gralen a sequence devoted to the beauty of roller skating, an overview of Newark’s history as an urban, industrial, and sometimes troubled area, of the Branch Brook Rink and roller skating in New Jersey, and of artistic expression in the community. Obviously a labor of love, this film is recommended for its close focus on one, joyful aspect of urban life.

Awards

  • New Jersey International Film Festival, Winner, Best Documentary, 2013
  • Newark Museum & Newark Black Film Festival, Paul Robeson Award