Pier Kids
TFI Suppport
TFI Pond5 Program 2019 Spring
Logline
PIER KIDS follows Desean, Casper and Krystal, three homeless queer youth who use the Piers at the end of Christopher Street to build new family as they navigate prostitution, the welfare system, and their biologicial families in order to find stable housing.
Elegance Bratton
Director, Writer
Elegance was thrown out of his mother’s home at the age of 16 in New Jersey for being gay. He spent the next 10 years homeless seeking refuge wherever he could find it. After ten years spent homeless he joined the U.S. Marine Corps where he learned how to make films. Elegance’s award-winning short films have played in almost 150 film festivals worldwide including Sundance, Outfest, and the American Black Film Festival. He is executive producer and creator of Viceland’s GLAAD-nominated series, MY HOUSE. He is also the author of the Kassel Art Book award winning photo book, Bound By Night. He served in the US Marine Corps as combat cameraman, and holds an undergraduate degree from Columbia University, and an MFA from NYU Tisch Grad Film.
Chester Algernal
Producer
Producer and costume designer Chester Algernal Gordon was the first male African-American costume designer to compete in competition at Cannes Film Festival with Danielle Lessovitz’s PORT AUTHORITY, produced by Martin Scorsese. Gordon was also a winner of the Tribeca Film Institute’s 2019, TFI All Access Grant. Gordon’s films have played in over 200 festivals combined including Cannes, Sundance, SXSW, BFI, Outfest, and the American Black Film Festival. He is also a producer for the GLAAD nominated, documentary TV series MY HOUSE, which is currently airing on Viceland.
Sabaah Jordan
Executive Producer
Sabaah Folayan made her directorial debut at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival with the feature length documentary WHOSE STREETS?. Recently nominated for a Peabody Award, the film chronicles the experiences of activists living in Ferguson, Missouri when Michael Brown Jr. was killed. WHOSE STREETS? was distributed theatrically by Magnolia Pictures, and supported by the Sundance Documentary Film Program, Tribeca Film Institute, the Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation among many others.
Terence Nance
Executive Producer
Terence Nance was born in Dallas, Texas in what was then referred to as the State-Thomas community. Nance learned personhood there. Nance’s first feature film, AN OVERSIMPLIFICATION OF HER BEAUTY, premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and was released theatrically in 2013. In 2014, he was named a Guggenheim Fellow.