#diego echeverria

[nerds-yearbook]

On January 14, 1980, the first episode of the science education program "3-2-1 Contact" aired. It also premiered their recurring segment The Bloodhound Gang with their first assignment "The Case of the Educated Pig." ("Noisy/Quiet: Production and Processing of Sound", 3-2-1 Contact, TV, event)

[deathnskulls]

Still image extracted from the documentary "Living Los Sures". "Diego Echeverria’s film skillfully represents the challenges residents of the Southside faced: poverty, drugs, gang violence, crime, abandoned real estate, racial tension, single-parent homes, and inadequate local resources. The complex portrait also celebrates the vitality of this largely Puerto Rican and Dominican community, showing the strength of their culture, their creativity, and their determination to overcome a desperate situation. Beautifully restored for the 30th anniversary premiere at the New York Film Festival, this documentary is an invaluable piece of New York City history." http://lossur.es/

[mubiblog]

“This revival and response to Los Sures has meant very much to me personally. It is not often that a documentary film gets a second life after so many years. This is permitting the film to be part of a deeper reflection on the history of Puerto Ricans and other Latino immigrant groups in the U.S. and to validate with a new, broader public the communities they have built, their experiences, difficulties and achievements. In all these ways, it is demonstrating another critical aspect of the power of documentary film.”

Diego Echeverria, the director of the essential 1984 portrait of Williamsburg, introduces his film Los Sures at Notebook.

MUBI is exclusively showing Los Sures in a new restoration September 3 - October 2, 2016.

[bluecollarfilm]

Los Sures (2016)

Thirty years ago, South Williamsburg was known as “Los Sures,” a place imbued with vibrant life, a community of close-knit Puerto Rican and Dominican families living amidst everyday economic struggle. Today, with the neighborhood fully gentrified, it feels vital to remember this lost world, and Diego Echeverria’s essential documentary, shot in the early eighties on 16mm, brings it all back to life, through the eyes of five different residents. Rediscovered in 2007, the film has become a cornerstone program of the Williamsburg arts nonprofit UnionDocs, which not only restored the film but in 2010 began the “Living Los Sures” historical memory project, an expansive documentary project about the Southside of Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Directed by:   Diego Echeverria

Release date:   April 15, 2016

[thefilmstage]

It’s quite an amazing experience, actually, to see a film going through a revival 34 or 33 years since I shot it — a film, actually, that for some period of time was only seen by people interested in urban sociology or anthropology, or people who were very much looking at the history of New York. Within a very confined, academic environment, mostly. So it’s quite a beautiful surprise to see it’s been seen by a much younger generation of people who are actually reflecting on how that neighborhood has changed, and what went on with a group of people who really represent a Latino, Puerto Rican immigration that went through a lot for many years, but had a very difficult time. To some extent, we try to capture it in the film. But it’s a reflection of, really, the duress, the hardship that any immigrant coming to the city and being in a neighborhood that’s marginalized in regard to employment, in regard to living conditions, and access services and so on.

Ahead of coming to Metrograph this weekend, we talk to the director of Los Sures about the immigrant experience, the gentrification of Williamsburg, and much more.