Street Film

Five alienated adults and the grungy charm of Baltimore make up the cast of Mark Street’s film At Home and Asea — this month’s Indy Film Showcase. The film hazards a potentially disastrous blend of documentary and fiction, but the talent manages to pull it off, which is no small accomplishment.

Street, who spoke with the Pitch during his weekly commute between Brooklyn and Baltimore, calls the film “a hybrid — on the slippery slope between the real and the constructed.”

The players include Brian, a 23-year-old college grad who could be mistaken for a homeless drifter if it weren’t for shots of his well-to-do family kitchen. He mostly drinks on rooftops or in bars, his aimlessness finding sympathy with a grizzled bar patron who says, “It’s the quest that counts, not the goal.”

Equal screen time is spread among Windsor, an African-American man preparing his late father’s suburban home for resale; Alicia and Leslie, two white single mothers who seem to have issues with their own moms; and Rhys, a pretty African-American actress of a certain age who has yet to become any kind of major player.

None of them is particularly compelling in his or her own right. What Street finds worthy of seventy minutes is a shared ennui that the city so perversely complements. Parts of Baltimore are lovely in a seaport kind of way, and the boxy homeliness of row houses makes for a fetching, ungainly backdrop to the stories.

Street, whose hefty résumé includes short films on subjects ranging from the American flag to softcore porn, says his work is about “retextualizing.” He loves to recycle found footage, and he’s been known to hand-bleach or otherwise deface film stock frame by frame.

The blurring between real and staged grew out of the cast’s improvisational skills, he says. “Someone said, CEAll films are documentaries,’ but some are documentaries with actors spouting real lines.”