REX

The setting is Flint, Michigan, a town infamous for poverty and crime. At the center of this story are two sisters. Claressa is older than Briana by eighteen months. Like most people in Flint, the two girls grew up tough: their dad was in jail for the first half of their lives and their mother battles with substance abuse. In a sad sense, a typical Flint upbringing?except for one difference. When she was eleven, Claressa went to the local boxing gym and started training. Nine years later, she is the first woman to win the Gold Medal in Women’s Boxing at the Olympics. Now Claressa is twenty and is training to go back to the Olympics in 2016. She is moving away from Flint to focus on her career. On the other hand, Briana is stuck in Flint and trouble just finds her: fights, drugs, sex. She never finished high school and is raising her two-year old son while his father is in jail. But Briana is no martyr?she’s tough, charismatic, and street-wise. Claressa is also the subject of an accompanying feature documentary called T-Rex.

Zackary Canepari is an independent photographer and filmmaker. In 2010, Zackary teamed with filmmaker Drea Cooper and launched California is a Place, a documentary film series about California which screened at a number of international festivals including Sundance and IDFA. Their feature documentary T-Rex premiered at SXSW and was featured on PBS in 2016. Currently, Zackary is working in Flint, Michigan on an interactive web series called Flint is a Place, which has earned him a fellowship with the Guggenheim Foundation.