Alina Skrzeszewska (PL/DE) | Hotel on the Nickel

SYNOPSIS

In 2006 I decided to move into one of the old dilapidated hotels in downtown Los Angeles.
Some people call them flophouses because in these places most inhabitants flop around on their beds most of the day. Poor old people spend their last days there. Others are searching for something, or running away from something, or have nothing else to hold on to. With the housing market going crazy in Los Angeles, many people are forced to live outside of what is considered mainstream society - either in these cheap hotels, in the missions, or on the streets. They live ‘on the Nickel’: not only because a nickel means 5 cents and thus not very much money. ‘The Nickel’ also refers to 5th Street, which is the center of L.A.’s infamous skid row. It is not just a place. It is like entering a parallel society. A vanishing society most likely - since the redevelopment of downtown Los Angeles into a "safe" expensive residential neighbourhood is well under way.

ARTIST’S BIOGRAPHY

Alina Skrzeszewska was born in Wroclaw, Poland. After her family fled Poland during the 1980ies, she grew up in Munich, West Germany. She studied Stage Design and Experimental Media at the University of the Arts in Berlin, and is currently completing her Master in Film and Video at the California Institute of the Arts. For the last two years she has been working on the Stories of a Promised Land series, comprising an ecclectic mix of movies between essayistic and documentary forms, all dealing with Los Angeles and Utopia.

FILMOGRAPHY

• The Scent of the Sky, 2002, DigiBeta, b&w, 15'00"
• Stories of a Promised Land - part 1, 2006,DigiBeta, colour, 11'00"