DN:FILM Streetwise & Tiny: The Life of Erin Brockwell
Two films from Martin Bell, STREETWISE and TINY: THE LIFE OF ERIN BROCKWELL, provide a singular double-feature opportunity to reflect on just about a great deal of what you might want to consider about the past four decades of American culture: youth dynamics, cycles of poverty, all manner of addiction, sexual practices and morals, prison pipelines, social service networks and impacts of parenting.
Each film builds off the photography of Bell’s wife, the legendary Mary Ellen Mark, who passed away in 2015. The first, Streetwise—originally released in 1984 and nominated for an Academy Award,—chronicled the lives of Seattle street kids. It remains nothing short of extraordinary, its verité capture of children and young adults living out a scrappy independence fueled by prostitution, cons and drug use having helped shape the national conversation about street life. Streetwise provided the template for what people expected adolescent street life to look like, be it in Larry Clark’s Kids or Law and Order: SVU. But Bell’s film had its origins in pure fact, not fiction: Marks encouraged Bell to make the film after she completed a photo essay for Life Magazine; fellow producer Cheryl McCall wrote the accompanying article. Seattle, which had recently been chosen as one of the most livable cities in America, provided a sharp backdrop as Marks documented the reality of the city's teen homelessness. Hyperlocal and non-generalized, Streetwise’s humane intuition made its subjects into absolutely distinct individuals.
The most radiant of these was Erin Brockwell, who goes by the nickname “Tiny," exuding what appears to be a bravado and confidence well beyond her 14 years. Her openness proved irresistible to Marks’ camera, and the meeting between photographer and subject began a 32-year relationship. That Marks and Bell stuck with many of the kids featured in the film is no surprise, so intimate is the access that they managed to achieve. Mark’s genius with her camera had much to do with what she could also accomplish without it: The kids and the people around them share their lives to degrees that beggar the imagination, and the filmmakers manage to document and advocate rather than exploit.
The later film, Tiny: The Life of Eric Brockwell, is the sequel and other bookend—up-to-date, fascinating, and heartbreaking—to Streetwise’s initial 1980s, 16mm one. Tiny: The Life of Eric Brockwell was funded with Kickstarter, not even a glimmer in the crowd’s sourcing eye back in the mid-80s, and Marks, arguably the genius anchor to the different floating stories in Streetwise, died before Tiny was completed; that may be part of why its sprawl seems comparatively unconstrained. Tiny’s story expanded wildly in the intervening decades, incorporating to one degree or another her ten children. To try to fit everything in, the film relies on the tropes of screens within screens, characters watching themselves as recorded on tablets several years earlier, reflecting on their earlier incarnations. Marks herself appears a few times, Bell paying affectionate homage to his remarkable partner, and seeing her on screen highlights her absence.
Marks’ star, now in the mid-2010s with her many kids and a host of adult problems, has lost much of feral magnetism that initially drew the photographer to her. But if she’s no longer that ‘80s street kid, hints of her do remain: the stubborn demeanor, the ability to survive, and Erin's fervent desire to create a family regardless of how the odds have been stacked. And if Tiny isn’t the raw verité of Streetwise, it’s a ruminative film that, as it jumps back in time to photographs and film footage of a younger girl in a different time, provides ample opportunities for us to witness Erin’s life, and for her—and us—to reflect on the forces within and outside her control.