A quick Google search can show anyone what New York looked like in the early ’80s, and, should that not be enough, there are always some YouTube videos to help satisfy a bit further. But those who really want to feel the place — hear the people’s stories, see the homes they live in, drive through the streets they walk every day — need to take note of Los Sures, a 1984 documentary about members of Southside Williamsburg’s vibrant Latino community. There’s great pleasure to be found in the sense of atmosphere, though as much as the film — its music, its fashion, its cinematography — feels like a blast from the past, its stories are no less valuable and common today than they were during the Reagan administration.
Los Sures has become something of a sleeper sensation since UnionDocs restored the project several years ago, and is sure to find a new life altogether when Metrograph give it a theatrical release this Friday. Ahead of that, I was fortunate enough to speak with its director, Diego Echeverria, whose compassion for the area and his film’s subjects — as well as a memory for the how and why of its production — clearly hasn’t faded.
The Film Stage: It’s not often that I talk to a director about a film that was shot nearly ten years before I was even born.
Diego Echeverria: 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.
That’s what Los Sures was about in 1983, when I began shooting there. So it’s a very gratifying experience. Also because the neighborhood definitely has changed, although throughout the country — and even in New York today — I’m sure there are neighborhoods going through very similar things. Or maybe different, because of how many years have passed and how conditions have changed. But still: hardship in regard to really having access to a situation where there is an access to services and education. So it’s basically a way of reflecting today, I hope, about what being marginalized and what an environment of poverty really implies, and what are the challenges that people have. Maybe they’re different, to some extent, to what they were in 1983; in some other ways, they’re pretty much the same. I think we see that, actually, with all the news about police abuses, let’s say, in cities around the country, that marginalization is still very much present in many, many cities throughout the country.
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. That’s what Los Sures was about in 1983, when I began shooting there. So it’s a very gratifying experience. Also because the neighborhood definitely has changed, although throughout the country — and even in New York today — I’m sure there are neighborhoods going through very similar things. Or maybe different, because of how many years have passed and how conditions have changed. But still: hardship in regard to really having access to a situation where there is an access to services and education.
So it’s basically a way of reflecting today, I hope, about what being marginalized and what an environment of poverty really implies, and what are the challenges that people have. Maybe they’re different, to some extent, to what they were in 1983; in some other ways, they’re pretty much the same. I think we see that, actually, with all the news about police abuses, let’s say, in cities around the country, that marginalization is still very much present in many, many cities throughout the country.
That relates to something I wanted to ask: have you noticed changes in how people respond over the years? Now it’s about a New York that might not exist anymore.
Yes. The reaction has changed. I felt that, when the film came out, it was not fully understood in the implications that it really had to look at an environment of poverty from the perspective of a population that was marginalized because of origin, language, culture. I think there is an acceptance, today, of what the Latino community has gone through — an understanding more than an acceptance. That, I think, to some extent shows a great deal of more maturity. That’s one part.
On the other hand, I find that, as often happens, at the moment in history that you’re trying to explore and represent a reality, there are often certain barriers that people often do not want to see very directly. Looking back, I think that Los Sures was a film that, yes, was appreciated — it got very good reviews and participated in festivals — but I think it was actually a way of looking at it that was a more superficial view. I see, with today’s audience, it’s a film that engages the audience a great deal more than I felt 30-or-so years ago.
Considering its rediscovery and restoration, was there a period where you didn’t really see the movie? Maybe you owned a copy, but weren’t thinking or talking about it as much.
Well, I used to work in television, and much of my career was spent producing documentaries for television. Often, you’re producing one film after another after another. Los Sures was always a very special film because I tried getting away from much of the television formula of a dumbed-down approach to issues, to problems, to processes of exploring reality. It was an attempt to really try to do it from the inside-out and get some very personal testimonials of people. So Los Sures, although it was a much different film from much of what I did in television, was a film that, after ten years… I must have seen it every four or five years if someone asks me to show it to them, and so on. But it was often on a very individual basis, on some screenings that were not with many people. What is surprising today is the reaction I’m getting from much larger audiences when they get together and watch the film. I got some of that at the beginning, when I just made the film, but it’s absolutely unexpected to see it today with, often, 300 or 400 people in a room.
So, yes, it’s a film that was placed aside, in many ways — in regard to my own work. I was involved with other projects, other things, so often we don’t go back to much of the work that we did in the past. Often, also, it got placed together with much of the films I made throughout the years, so it was a blurred in a group of films that, yes, I enjoyed making, that I rarely saw throughout the years until UnionDocs decided that they valued the film and invited me to participate, with them, in this project called Living Los Sures. So, yes, everything helps over the past four years, really looking at how a new generation of documentarians are seeing the film as a film that tells a story that they appreciate.
Metrograph, where this theater shows, tends to be attended by a lot of younger people — people who, like myself, weren’t alive when this movie was shot. Have you had much contact with the people there about this movie’s screenings?
No. I live in Miami right now. It’s been my home for the last five years. I’m not in New York; I go there two, three times a year. But Metrograph just opened a month ago. I haven’t been there. I’m really looking forward to being at the screening on the fifteenth on this month, and being able to have that dialogue with the audience again — really seeing how they are actually looking at what Los Sures used to be 33 years ago, having a sense of what it is today and then — but hopefully to speak about the much larger problems that we were talking about a moment ago.
About the challenges of really approaching a reality that was so difficult, so hard, so wonderful in so many ways, because you do discover people who face those challenges in very unique and fascinating ways. As it is in the case of most women who appear in Los Sures, you know? The strength they have, the way they’re keeping their families together, the sense of community that was built in that neighborhood. What remains of that, I don’t know, and I would love to learn a little bit more about it. And often young Puerto Ricans or Dominicans who grew up in Los Sures or are still living there. It’s a joy to get their comments and how they’re looking at the film, because they do bring a whole perspective of what the neighborhood was for their parents’ generation — and what they miss and what they don’t miss from that experience.
One of the greatest things about this movie is the capturing of little bits of behavior that the subjects exude, which seem to build entire personalities bit-by-bit. I’m wondering if you, over the years, remembered these things about the people, or if watching the film again floods you with memories.
I always remember that, Nick. That’s the wonderful thing about certain films and the experiences they leave behind for those of us who have the chance of participating in and making them. Strangely enough, some pieces of dialogue or expressions that people use. I think of little scenes from the neighborhood — things that were not even in the film that come back with tremendous experience. I’ve been fortunate enough to see most of the people who were in the film again and to really speak about what that experience was for me and what it was for them. So we’ve had an intense relationship that has really come back because of the film, of seeing how successful most of them have become in life.
Tito became someone who worked in the neighborhood, being in charge of several buildings, actually, that he took care of. Marta got a job soon after the film and was really able to have this wonderful family around her and yet be someone with a great deal of accomplishments. Evelyn became, actually, someone who’s in charge of a department of Bellevue Hospital. Cuso is someone who’s still living in that neighborhood. He had problems of dependency in those years that he was able to overcome. So you have an amazing group of people that, when I look at them today, I’m surprised at everything they’ve been able to overcome through the years. Maybe, soon after we made the film, there were conditions that changed for most of them.
I’d like to know if there was an artistic community that helped foster and support this production, or if you often took it upon yourself to go out and film. The end credits show that several people were involved, but was there an early stage of total independence?
There were always cultural elements that were strong in Los Sures. Was there a creative community? There were musicians and people doing poetry, some interesting work, but it was not the environment that exists today, and if things were happening with this creative force, it was right on the streets — with the people, the graffiti, the break-dancing you see at the beginning. This was 1983. The first break-dancing I ever saw was in Los Sures. The creative aspects were there, but not in the ways it is today. Today it’s a very different community, and it has a different character altogether — because of gentrification, on the one hand, but also a younger generation that has brought a completely different kind of energy into the neighborhood. So I would say it was a different creative force.
Now, there were certain things that I always valued, and that’s something that, with Fernando Moreno — who was also the associate producer and a well-known reporter in New York in those years — we always felt there was a unique energy in comparison to other neighborhoods in New York that we had visited, and that we visited way before. He, as he was reporting stories and I, as I was doing stories for NBC or other news outlets. We always felt there was a creative force, a cultural identity in Los Sures that was so, so strong, that really jumped on you, and it had to do with that energy that I thought the film, to some extent, captures. It has to do with the music that blasts from little bodegas or billiard rooms or bars, or people actually with a boombox at full volume — the people that often were dancing in the streets with those kids.
That’s the creative force that we saw. Then there were the elements that had to do with the elements of religion. As in any Latin community, religion plays a major role. If you’re from a Puerto Rican community, we see it in the case of one of the people who participates in this espiritista session, and that relates to her problems with her son and the problems he’s having and how he’s affected by that. So the cultural elements are very much present, and we always felt that we very much needed to bring these alive — that we were always choosing people who were not only going to speak on some very personal basis about themselves, but bringing alive that cultural identity of a neighborhood, and that creative force you’re making reference to.
Los Sures will open at Metrograph on Friday, April 15.