From the roof we see Manhattan in the horizon. Feet moving, hands moving, people moving on the roof, an cosmopolitan love story.

Passion and fire. A courtesan who has a love affair with one of her clients….

Edited by Carla Dutra

The artists…

Marie-Alonzo Alonzo Snyder, dancer and choreographer. http://www.tangerinedance.com/

Founder & artistic director of Tangerine,  a collective of dance projects that embrace and reflect the zest and essence of life stories and cultures.

Born in the Philippines, Marie was raised in Italy and eventually settled in New York City attending New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts earning her BFA and MFA in Dance.

Henri Velandia, dancer and choreographer

Founder of HotSalsaHot the preeminent salsa school in the Princeton, NJ area.

Native to Venezuela, his style is a unique fusion of hip-urban street roots with formal ballroom technique, ballet precision, and the freedom of modern dance.

More about him at.. http://www.hotsalsahot.com/

Making off

As usual some  making off photos…

Photos by Federica Esposito

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Photos by Davy Areia

If you are in the heart of the big apple, your desire can be accomplished easily… But not very far from there, in the South Bronx, if your wish is to eat fresh food, you may struggle to find it.

Let’s hear what the community has to say about it and what they are doing to change this situation.

To get involved…

Just Food http://www.justfood.org/
New York City Community Garden Coalition http://www.nyccgc.org/
La Familia Verde http://www.lafamiliaverde.org/
Garden La Finca del Sur http://www.bronxfarmers.blogspot.com/
Adopt a farm box http://www.farmboxes.org/

List of farmers Markets in The Bronx

Just Food http://www.justfood.org/city-farms/city-farms-markets/market-schedules
Greenmarket Farmers Markets http://www.cenyc.org/ourmarkets
Harvest Home http://www.harvesthomefm.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=104&Itemid=180

Making off

If you want to know more…

NYC Health department
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/home/home.shtml
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/dpho/dpho.shtml

Health campaign
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F4t8zL6F0c

The New York Times – Getting Fresh in the South Bronx
Video / <a href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/23/dining/23bronx.html?_r=1&th&emc=th “>For a Healthier Bronx, a Farm of Their Own

Fight Big Food http://www.fightbigfood.org/about/
Citizens Committee for New York City http://www.citizensnyc.org/
Black Farmers and Urban Gardeners Conference http://www.blackfarmersconf.org/

FoodNYC : A blueprint for sustainable food system http://www.mbpo.org/uploads/foodnyc.pdf

Hunts Point – The Worlds Largest Online Food Distribution Center http://www.huntspoint.com/

Glossary:

Food Justice is communities exercising their right to grow, sell and eat healthy food. Healthy food is fresh, nutritious, affordable, culturally-appropriate and grown locally with care for the well-being of the land, workers and animals. People practicing food justice leads to a strong local food system, self-reliant communities and a healthy environment.

Food security refers to the availability of food and one’s access to it. A household is considered food secure when its occupants do not live in hunger or fear of starvation.

CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. CSA allows city residents to have direct access to high quality, fresh produce grown locally by regional farmers.

When you become a member of a CSA, you’re purchasing a “share” of vegetables from a regional farmer. Weekly or bi-weekly, from June until October or November, your farmer will deliver that share of produce to a convenient drop-off location in your neighborhood.

CSA members pay for an entire season of produce upfront (typically $400-$600). This early bulk payment enables your farmer to plan for the season, purchase new seed, make equipment repairs, and more.

Food Stamps is a public help to low income families

WIC is a special supplemental Nutritional Program for Women, Infants & Children

Our next assignment was a Character Film, to tell a story with no interviews. Called direct cinema, I had to choose a person and follow her or him.

For this documentary, I chose to shoot my mother, a court interpreter. We were a crew of two and followed her on her daily routine, to record life “as it happens”.

I wrote the story I wanted to tell, I prepared the shoot list, I got the required authorizations to film in the District Courts and we went on our trip to Massachusetts…

Here is the work schedule :

Pre-production : February 10 to February 19

Shooting in Boston : February 20 to February 23rd

Editing : March 8 to April 4th

Anna, my faithful friend was there with me, helping. We shot with two cameras. What a lesson! We learned a lot on the fly. Color & light settings must be exactly the same: white balancing done at the same time and the IRIS opening set at the same level. For camera position and sound synchronization, a special attention is needed.

It was an amazing experience! What an incredible feeling! The camera give us the opportunity to be in all these places as if we were not there… Looking through the camera viewfinder, I forget that I am in the room; I have the impression that I am behind a TV or a computer screen.

We experience something we would not see in our daily lives. It gives us the chance to open a door to another world and share it with others.

“A camera is a tool for learning how to see without a camera.”

Dorothea Lange

Here some photos took by Anna Larsson :

The film is called “Much more then just words…”

Soon in your computer screen. Rendez-vous in a few days in this site.

This is my first documentary. A short “Observational” film. Shot on 16mm black and white film, with an old Arriflex.

We had to produce a visual portrait of a place, event or activity.

Initially, I wanted to do a portrait of an open market, filming the whole process. Early morning the trucks arriving, each seller building his/her tent, to the end, streets being cleaned, people getting what was left behind… Influenced by the images of my hometowns (Rio and Paris)…

But in NY, the markets don’t have the same glamour of my memories… We don’t have here what we call open markets in Europe or Latin America… We have instead the Green or Farmers Markets. The concept is interesting: green, bio, fair-trade… But they are very small, very organized, very clean. During the winter, they sell mostly potatoes and apples. It was not exactly the story I wanted to tell with my Tupi Guarani European mind.

Being a New Yorker now, I decided to look for something that was local and original, better representing this small part of the world.

I hope you enjoy…

We were a crew of 4. Each of us had her/his own film. And we changed crew positions in each other films. Lahoe did her film about dog’s run in NY. Anna did hers about the process of making a bagel and Alex about a fashion photo being created.