America the Beautiful

A miners’ strike is brew­ing in Butte, Mon­tana, in the rev­o­lu­tion­ary year of 1917. Tens of thou­sands of men have already lost their lives in the copper mines of the … read more

Detroit’s story has encap­su­lat­ed the iconic nar­ra­tive of Amer­i­ca over the last cen­tu­ry— the Great Migra­tion of African Amer­i­cans escap­ing Jim Crow; the rise of man­u­fac­tur­ing and the middle class; … read more

One region, two lan­guages: Brault’s film ELOGE DU CHIAC takes place in New Brunswick, in the east­ern­most part of Canada, where both French and Eng­lish are spoken. A ded­i­cat­ed young … read more

In some parts of St. Louis, Mis­souri, preg­nant moth­ers hope they will have girls. Half of the boys who grow up here don’t live to cel­e­brate their eigh­teenth birth­day. This … read more

What is this land that promis­es a better future for so many people, luring them to come and settle, to cul­ti­vate it, to live? What is this land whose real­i­ty … read more

In 1979, short­ly before he died, James Bald­win wrote an unfin­ished work in which he reflect­ed on his life as a homo­sex­u­al writer in the con­text of the black Civil … read more

What char­ac­ter­izes public life? What­ev­er it is, it could hardly be more lively than in Jack­son Heights, where 167 dif­fer­ent lan­guages are spoken. There are shops, restau­rants, and places of … read more

In LONG STORY SHORT, over 100 people at home­less shel­ters, food banks, adult lit­er­a­cy pro­grams, and job train­ing cen­ters in Los Ange­les and the Bay Area in Cal­i­for­nia dis­cuss their … read more

In the early 1980s, Diego Echev­er­ria took a 16mm camera into the streets of the South­side of Williams­burg, then a pri­mar­i­ly Puerto Rican neigh­bor­hood and one of the city’s poor­est, most crime-ridden areas. Still, amidst the urban blight, Echev­er­ria finds a thriv­ing street cul­ture in which music, break­danc­ing, and graf­fi­ti abound.
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. (Union­Docs)

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Diego Echev­er­ria geb. in Chile, aufgewach­sen in Puerto Rico. Ab 1971 studierte er Film an der Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, New York. Er arbeit­ete als Fernse­hjour­nal­ist, u.a. für die Pio­niersendung „51st State“ von Jack Willis (Chan­nel 13 WNET).
Filme u.a.: EL LEGADO: A PUERTO RICAN LEGACY (1980), PUERTO RICO: A COLONY THE AMERICAN WAY (1981).