Having recently seen it, I feel confident saying few documentaries transport viewers into New York’s past as effectively as Los Sures, a brief and efficient document of Southside Williamsburg’s Latino community circa 1984. More than an entertaining look into the lives of strangers, it’s really, truly a blast from the past — the rough-and-tumble Williamsburg as it lived and breathed in a pre-gentrified era.
After decades spent toiling in obscurity, Diego Echeverria‘s documentary was restored and given new exhibition by UnionDocs. Now, 32 years after its premiere, Los Sures will be given a theatrical run at New York’s own Metrograph theater starting on April 15 — ahead of which is a trailer I’d consider representative of the film’s attributes. If what’s displayed herein proves at all intriguing, Los Sures is a movie for you.
See the preview below (via Gothamist), and check back next week for my in-depth interview with Echeverria:
Synopsis:
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.