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Despite a handful of immediately upsetting sequences, Diy hip-hop musical Know How never coheres into a cathartic fictional account of its creators' turbulent adolescence. Based on its five young stars' real-life experiences as New York foster care wards, Know How presents its protagonists' teenage years through the lens of personal traumas. But because director Juan Carlos Pineiro Escoriaza and his seven co-writers overemphasize drug use, bullying, and domestic violence in order to inevitably show characters overcoming adversity, the film only effectively underlines problems, rather than solutions. The disparity between Know How's uplifting aims and its brutally sensational means is most apparent in two pseudo-empowering story lines featuring contra...

From director Juan Carlos Pineiro Escoriaza, comes "Know How," an award-winning docu-drama/musical, written by and starring young people in New York City's foster care system - a non-professional cast of actors and writers that includes Deshawn Brown, Niquana Clark, Michael Kareem Dew, Gabrielle Garcia, Gilbert Howard, Claribelle Pagan and Ebonee Simpson. First Run Features will open the film in select theaters on May 15, which will be followed by a national premiere on Participant Media's television network, Pivot, on May 27, at 11Pm Est.  The film, a tale of transience and perseverance, produced by the New York youth-serving non-profit The...

Year: 2009

Directors: Juan Carlos Pineiro-Escoriaza

Writers: Juan Carlos Pineiro-Escoriaza

IMDb: link

Trailer: link

Review by: Marina Antunes

Rating: 6 out of 10

Millions of people give countless hours of their lives to it, there are comics about it, jokes and heck, even a very successful web series about it; the world of online gaming is as encompassing and, as director Carlos Pineiro-Escoriaza' would have you believe, as debilitating as online gambling. The proof: Second Skin, a documentary which follows a group of individuals all of whom spend somewhat concerning amounts of time playing World of Warcraft (WoW) among other MMORPGs.

It’s a great idea for a documentary. Everyone knows someone who plays and though some of us understand the addiction (don’t we all have some addiction of one type or another?), many have a hard time adjusting to the idea that spending 12 hours in front of a computer is healthy.

Online gaming. What’s it good for? Apparently lots if you’re into it, but not very much if you’re not. Juan Carlos Pineiro-Escoriaza, the director of “Second Skin”, goes spelunking in the world of massively multiplayer online role playing games (aka Mmorpg) and surfaces 20 pounds heavier for it. (Just kidding, gamers! Don’t send angry emails!) The documentary “Second Skin” is part day-in-the-life expose of online gamers and an introduction to the virtual world for those wondering what all the fuss is about. I was never much of an RPG’er, since it always demanded more time and attention than I could give it. As a result, my games of choice were always the “Call of Duty” of the world — fast-paced shooters where I could jump in at any second, play for a bit, and leave whenever I wanted without no one the wiser, or indeed, caring. That...

How big is the Mmo (Massive Multiplayer Online) gaming community? Big enough for Hollywood to take notice, with geek favorite Sam Raimi currently developing (with plans to direct) a feature-length film version of the dominant Mmo game in the land, “World of Warcraft”. And if you have no idea who these people are who sit in front of their computers all day playing in virtual space, Juan Carlos Pineiro-Escoriaza is about to clue you in with his documentary “Second Skin”. They’re like Felicia Day and her “Do you Wanna Date my Avatar” music video, minus, well, Felicia Day and the dancing girls in the background. Second Skin takes an intimate look at three sets of computer gamers whose lives have been transformed by online virtual worlds. An emerging genre of computer software called Massively Multiplayer Online games, or MMOs, allows millions of users to interact simultaneously in virtual spaces.