…And Shadows Danced Again on the Riverbank:
Bronx World Film Returns to Programming
Bronx World Film Cycle, 'Summer 2022
Walter Krochmal, Founder and Executive Director
PHOTOS: Walter Krochmal and PICAFO News
Published September 26, 2022 - 3rd Anniversary of the Release of Tlacuilos
September 7, 2022
Hunts Point. Afternoon peaks September 7th past as we roll through this storied South Bronx neighborhood to an historic premiere at a venue where this borough, re-imagined, sprouts from a former urban wasteland, yesteryear meeting tomorrow, and where we at long last break the agonizing two-plus years of a darkened calendar.
You may know of these streets as the setting for Fort Apache, The Bronx, the 1981 Paul Newman film about the embattled 41st Precinct (that’s the actual precinct number) caught up in a storm of galloping street crime and corruption in its ranks. The broad-brushstroke portrayal of blacks and Puerto Ricans as violent criminals sparked massive protests, some from police officials themselves. The production ended up including disclaimers at screenings.
You may know of these streets from images of the 1980s — city blocks in rubble, crack houses and heroin dens in hulking ruins, warehouse walls spanning to the horizon broken only by steel doors and gates, a remote industrial landscape seeded with misery and neglect — branded for over six decades into the collective memory of New York City and far beyond. For all that time this the 16th Congressional District and poorest in the United States, stood as an avatar of failure, a rich city in a rich country allowed to collapse in absence of a war. In 2022, district lines were redrawn, yet the poverty remains.
You may not know of these streets on this isolated peninsula, cold-pressed between the Bruckner Expressway to the northwest and the Bronx River to the east (unless you live here or have roamed the area over the decades) as an enormous open-air atelier that weaned several generations of urban artists from the borough.
Like much of the South Bronx, the very isolation, the abundance of wall space and natural light offered eager young artists surrounded by poverty and desolation a propitious laboratory. As early break dancers “turned a 3-foot square piece of cardboard into a dance floor,” their peers honed their game on this massive canvas, evolving from the early “tags” to a world-class muralist school lead by masters such as Tats Cru.
Pulsing just under the surface you may glean the Wecquaesgeek, natives of Harlem and the Hudson’s eastern banks whose land we stand on, in their Lenape tongue; the seafaring Swedes and Danes; the well-heeled who made summer and country estates here until a rail yard displaced them first, then one of the world’s largest food distribution centers; the strains of Afro-Cuban music in its infancy from glamorous old dance halls. Look to the East River. That’s the location for the first film version of The Titanic, shot in the early 20th century.
Tlacuilos premiering in the Bronx, after a tour of European festivals, is a lifetime event for several generations of Central Americans who took graffiti, molded into their own masterful form of expression, and speak to the world as never before.
Tlacuilos set precedents from its release, and as one of the young muralist masters says, “has done more to unite us than politics has ever done.” It casts a keen eye on contemporary Central American youth culture and will remain timeless.
Tlacuilos is not currently available for viewing online, however Bronx World Film continues to work with Director Federico Peixoto to bring it, along with our unique world film programs, to underserved communities. The boro’s lack of arthouse cinemas and scant support for such initiatives faces strong emerging alliances.
With the great diversity that marks our programming, Tlacuilos screened with unreleased short films by Tushar Waghela (INDIA) and Maria Hengge (GERMANY), as well as works by Yuzuki Tachibana (JAPAN), and Gregory Hernández (USA) with a trailer of his recently released documentary 1.5 Million, on the long-standing literacy crisis in The Bronx.
Roque Dalton
“The definitive film chronicle
of graffiti in Central America”
Bronx Premiere of Tlacuilos
Skeleton Cru Hoisting the Jib
We arrive at this spot, we’re just a skeleton cru to set up Bronx World Film Cycle, Summer of ’22.
A portion of the images in this report come from the lens of PICAFO News, founded by Honduran journalist Fredy Pineda, a veteran of of print, radio, television and photojournalism. Fredy has captured many iconic moments in our development since the founding in 2011.
Good fortune also brings to this crew the gentleman named Greg Brown, who calls one day out of the blue inquiring about film work. We talk for an hour, I tell him that we don’t produce yet, but will soon, and Greg agrees to volunteer on the Summer Cycle.
At this first experience in the film world, Greg can’t hide his excitement, and his presence on the crew turns out to be critical to the launch event’s success. We look forward to continuing the energy exchange for an urgent greater good.
Not of the crew but most in the know, Ms. Cinthia Menutole, expert in contemporary visual art, found our main attraction compelling enough to make the long trek out from Brooklyn.
Hunts Point Riverside Park (BRONX)
We roll down the steep Lafayette Avenue to the Bronx River. The Lenape called it Aquahung (“river of high bluffs”).
On the border of the peninsula we enter Hunts Point Riverside Park, Rudy Bruner Silver Award winner for urban excellence (2009). It houses a non-profit boat-building organization, a pier, the wing of an arts organization, a water-themed sculpture park and an amphitheatre.
Up goes our screen, the crew hoisting the jib, when we’re hailed by David González, celebrated pioneer journalist at The New York Times, among many others, and native of these parts. He’s made his assignment dovetail with our screening, and recalls the tannery that ran here and the fouled waters.
Today, it’s part of the Bronx River Greenway, a network of bike paths and recreational sites to dot the river named for Swedish sea captain Jonas Bronck, among the first European settlers here and who made his home nearby.
Our favored opening venue since we launched our Summer Cycle in August of 2017, the park speaks to the power of communities engaged in citizen activism and their ability to bring new life to old with a clear view to the future.
Dusk gives way to night and Bronx World Film Cycle, Summer 2022 sees up on its screen the brilliant palette of Tlacuilos, a film by Costa Rican director and DJ Federico Peixoto that has become a signature collaboration between perfectly matched partners.
As a Central American and as founder of an organization that has pioneered Central American art house here in the USA, hearing news in 2019, months before its release, of a documentary tracing the evolution of graffiti across the isthmus stopped me in my tracks.
One of the historic tragedies of the region that Central Americans call La Patria Grande, or “The Big Country,” has been the inability of its peoples to constitute a single entity or act in concert for the greater benefit of the whole. The very idea that someone would attempt to do something so comprehensive in film and succeed had me intrigued…
I reached out to Federico, and we opened a conversation that finds us, three years later, celebrating the film’s original release in Spanish. We screened the world English-language premiere at Bronx World Film Cycle Winter 2020, at La Nacional in Manhattan, and had the great honor of premiering it in The Bronx this past September 2022.
“there’s a strong presence of the Native in graffiti”
“this trade’s a tough one / cuesta este oficio”
“when the people were just so many backsides…”
«cuando el pueblo era un montón de espaldas»
In Memoriam: Bboy Milo
Bboy Milo won the love and admiration of his peers as one of the pioneers who took Hip Hop all over Central America. He did not live to see Tlacuilos. Tragically, he disappeared in El Salvador years before its release. The movement considers him a martyr. Respect!
We met by the waters
to kindle the fire
and shadows danced again
on the riverbank
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