Arthur Balder on CUNY TV — ‘Independent Sources’
The City University of New York interviews the director about the making of the film.
The City University of New York’s television programme Independent Sources interviewed Arthur Balder about Little Spain, covering the making of the film from a number of angles — the research, the residency at La Nacional, and the assembly of the archive.
CUNY TV, “Independent Sources”. Interview with Arthur Balder.
“The film took several years of work on different levels.”
Arthur Balder, Independent Sources, CUNY TV
The programme
CUNY TV is the television station of the City University of New York. It has broadcast since 1985, carries no advertising, and is seen across the city on channel 25.3 and on cable. Its programming is almost entirely local: public affairs, education, the arts, and the life of the city’s communities.
Independent Sources is its series on New York’s ethnic and immigrant communities, and on the newspapers those communities publish. The set says as much — the mastheads behind the presenters are the city’s own immigrant press, in a dozen languages. It is, in other words, a programme about exactly the kind of community that built 14th Street, interviewing the director of the only film about it.
What the interview covers
The conversation runs through the making of the film rather than its subject alone. Three threads in particular.
The research. The film was assembled across several years of work, on several levels at once — locating survivors and descendants of the quarter, recording their testimony, and running down the photographic record of streets that no longer look anything like they did. Most of the shops and institutions the film describes had already closed before the research began.
The residency. Balder was an artist in residence at La Nacional, the Spanish Benevolent Society at 239 West 14th Street, between 2009 and 2010, while the project was being developed. The film was shot in large part inside that building, and Robert Sanfiz, who was then its director, appears in the film and reads the voice-over.
The archive. The material the film rests on is photographic, it was gathered over years, and it is held under exclusive rights — which is the reason the film is bought by university and public libraries rather than simply streamed. See The Archive and Libraries and Universities.
The coverage in New York
This was not the only New York coverage. United Press International reviewed the film in January 2015, calling it “a valuable addition to New York’s immigration history”. La Voz Hispana de Nueva York published Donald Kuspit’s review in Spanish that July. And in 2015 the Association of Latin Entertainment Critics of New York gave the film its Latin ACE Award for Best Documentary.
Related
- Little Spain — clips and television
- The film
- The archive
- La Nacional — the Spanish Benevolent Society, 1868–2000
- Arthur Balder, director
- All press coverage