- This event has passed.
Rompiendo Puertas – Break and Enter a.k.a. Squatters (Newsreel #62)
July 24, 2017 @ 7:00 pm - 9:45 pm
Loisaida Inc. in collaboration with Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space and Third World Newsreel are proud to present:
Break and Enter a.k.a. Squatters (Newsreel #62)
Duration: 40 min.
Doors open at: 7:00 pm
OVERVIEW:
This film captures the militant antecedents to today’s housing reclamation movement in New York City. In 1970, several hundred Puerto Rican and Dominican families reclaimed housing left vacant by the city. They pulled the boards off the doors, cleaned and repaired the buildings and moved in.Third World Newsreel’s historical Newsreel collection provides contemporary audiences with a vast archive of political documentary films chronicling the social movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s
Thanks to the generous contributions of the National Film Preservation Foundation, BREAK AND ENTER has been preserved and is available for purchases and rentals.BREAK AND ENTER was preserved thanks to the generous support of the National Film Preservation Foundation. This film is available for public screenings.
REVIEWS:
“…the film is one of the first to represent working class Latinos-particularly Latinas-as active agents of change in new social movements… Break and Enter can be understood as part of the Puerto Rican cultural “renaissance” or innovative cultural formations that emerged in the city during the late 1960s and unsettled the distinctions between art and politics as well as imagined new ways of being in the city.”
– Frances Negron-Muntaner, Latino Arts and Activism Archive at Columbia University
“This film emerges as one of Newsreel’s most powerful films.”
– Cynthia A. Young, Soul Power
KICKING-OFF THE EVENING WITH A SPECIAL SCREENING AND PRESENTATION OF:
Voces de Fillmore
Duration: 19 min.
This documentary traces the memories and experiences of families living on one block located in South Williamsburg, a Brooklyn neighborhood that is affectionately known by long time residents as Southside or Los Sures. In the past decade, Southside’ Latinx and working class population has steadily decreased from seventy to forty-five percent, in part due to gentrification in New York City. In this film, Puerto Rican families who have lived and raised children in Los Sures for several decades talk about their quest to preserve a sense of community in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood.
Bios:
Teresa Basilio Gaztambide is originally from San Juan, Puerto Rico and has been living in Brooklyn for the past 20 years. Currently Teresa is the Deputy Director for New America’s Resilient Communities Program working with Hurricane Sandy impacted neighborhoods to co-design, build and maintain weather-resistant and locally controlled wifi networks. Prior to joining New America, Teresa was the Co-Executive Director of Global Action Project (G.A.P.) a social justice youth media organization that works with youth most impacted by injustice to build the knowledge, tools, and relationships needed to create media for community power, cultural expression and political change. Teresa is also a multidisciplinary artist and organizer. Her latest production Voces de Fillmore is a documentary on the experiences of Puerto Rican families living in one block in the neighborhood of Los Sures in Williamsburg, Brooklyn dealing with the impact of the gentrification and displacement of their working class community. She recently co-organized the Detroit – Puerto Rico Solidarity Exchange which brought together a delegation of 80 Detroit and Puerto Rican organizers and cultural workers (from the island and diaspora) committed to grassroots efforts rooted in self-determination to the Allied Media Conference.
Rose Muzio is Associate Professor of Politics at SUNY Old Westbury and author of Radical Imagination Radical Humanity: Puerto Rican Political Activism in NY. The book provides the first in-depth account of the origins and activism of El Comite-Movimiento de Izquierda Nacional Puertorriqueno, one of the main organizations of the Puerto Rican Left in the 1970s. Operation Move-In is discussed at length in both the book and a previously published article in Centro, Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies.
Carmen Martell (who appears briefly in the film) has resided in the Upper West Side for over 60 years since coming to New York from Puerto Rico as a child. She was an organizer and participant in Operation Move-In, the Secretary of Organization of El Comite for a decade, and more recently one of the “35 women for Oscar” who helped gain Obama’s last-minute release of Oscar Lopez Rivera. Carmen worked for former Borough President Ruth Messinger and for many years was the Director of Human Resources of UniteHere Health Center.
