Skid Row Marathon

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Filmmakers: Mark Hayes, Gabriele Hayes

Runtime: 85 min

When a criminal court judge starts a running club on LA’s notorious skid row and begins training a motley group of addicts and criminals to run marathons, lives begin to change. Skid Row Marathon follows five runners as they rise from the mean streets of LA to run marathons around the world, fighting the pull of homelessness and addiction at every turn.

About The Filmmaker

Mark Hayes
Director Mark Hayes studied documentary filmmaking at New York University under renowned documentarian George Stoney.

Skid Row Marathon, his first feature-length documentary, is currently making the rounds at film festivals around the US. To date, it has racked up a dozen Best Documentary and Audience Awards. It will be released in Europe in over two hundred theaters this coming May.

In the 1980’s Mark traveled extensively through the East Block countries. He picked up his wife (and Skid Row Marathon Producer) Gabi in former East Germany while she was hitchhiking. They were married but were not permitted to leave until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Over the years, Mark has directed several documentaries related to the Cold War, which have aired on public television in the US, Europe, and Australia.

Mark has also taught screenwriting at Southern Methodist University.

Gabriele Hayes
Gabriele Hayes was born in former East Germany. Since she wouldn’t join the Communist Party she was made to work in a factory making irons when she was fourteen. She attended Friedrich Schiller University and received her Masters Degree in Russian and English. After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, she was allowed to travel. She moved to the US and now lives in Los Angeles. Gabriele produced the feature-length documentary film Skid Row Marathon.
In 2011 she produced One Germany, The Other Side of the Wall. It examines the reunification of Germany after 20 years. It features interviews with the current President of Germany, former political prisoners, Stasi (East German secret police) officers, rock musicians, and comedians.

She also produced the documentary From Red State to Golden State (2013), which tells the story of Soviet Jews, and their families who immigrated to Los Angeles before the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Gabriele still has been a member of the Skid Row Running Club for over five years. She also runs marathons around the world.