United Press International — “Artur Balder details Hispanic immigration documentary ‘Little Spain’”
Rafael Bernal, United Press International — 15 January 2015
The international news agency covered the film in its entertainment pages. Rafael Bernal, then news editor at United Press International and later a reporter at The Hill, reviewed it as a contribution to the historical record rather than as a film alone.
Bernal’s point is structural. Where the Irish and Italian arrivals that shaped New York largely preceded film and recording technology, Spanish emigration continued into the 1970s — so the director was able to work with archival footage and direct interviews with immigrants and their children, rather than reconstruction.
The review identifies the film’s structure as a community immigration story rather than the solitary immigrant saga then common, running from the recreation of local customs in an American city, through a nationality-defined neighbourhood’s heyday, to integration into the melting pot. Bernal also notes a second dimension: because of the shared language, Little Spain the neighbourhood drew Latin American immigrants over time, and Little Spain the film records integration between immigrant communities, not only into the host country.
The piece was datelined Washington, 15 January 2015, and closed by noting that the film was on sale on DVD and would screen on 30 January at the William V. Musto Cultural Center in Union City, New Jersey.
In the author’s words
“A valuable addition to New York’s immigration history. Arthur Balder’s magnifying-glass perspective serves to build an original story arc.”
Rafael Bernal, United Press International, 15 January 2015