Southside Stories - Living Los Sures

Experience Southside Stories (2013), an immersive audio journey into the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York. The walk features the long-term residents of Williamsburg’s Southside community.

Discover how residents are preserving a sense of identity, community and connection to “home” amid exponentially rising rents and a landscape rapidly undergoing transformation.

Visit the official website to download the full walk.

Director’s Statement

In fall 2012, our team embarked on Collaborative Fellowships at UnionDocs, a center for documentary art in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. As part of a group of twelve fellows, we were assigned with creating work for UnionDocs multi-year project, Living Los Sures. The project uses the 1984 feature film Los Sures (dir. Diego Echeverria), as a starting point for investigations into the neighborhood of South Williamsburg. UnionDocs recognizes the history of the cinematic documentary tradition, while supporting work that expands the definition of what documentary can be. We set out to create an audio walk that featured stories from the neighborhood’s longterm residents, inspired by audio walking tours like Passing Stranger: East Village Poetry Walk (dir. Pejk Malinovski), Her Long Black Hair (dir. Janet Cardiff), and Soundwalk: Hasidic Williamsburg. We were motivated to take documentary out of the cinema, onto the streets and in public spaces.

Within a generation, the neighborhood of Williamsburg has drastically changed. Rents have steeply increased and places once considered unsafe are now highly desirable, a sense of connection to home and community has been ruptured. The legacy of neighborhoods like Williamsburg are constantly changing. The New York City of a decade ago doesn’t exist anymore, and New York in a decade will be a very different place. The walk opens a space for conversations between newcomers and long-term residents about the community’s past, present and future. Participants get an opportunity to see the neighborhood from a different perspective, walk in the shoes of another person and ultimately empathize with their experiences.”

— Shannon Carroll

Screenings

Living Los Sures, Ildiko Butler Gallery, Fordham University, New York, NY, 2014
StoryCode Forum, New York, NY, 2014
Southside Stories, UnionDocs, Brooklyn, NY, 2014
Southside Stories, Creative Time Summit: Art, Place & Dislocation in the 21st Century, New York, NY, 2013
Living Los Sures: Preview in the Park, Brooklyn, NY, 2013

Excerpt: Piraguas

This is our neighborhood. This is where we grew up. People look at us like we’re foreigners, and they don’t realize that if it wasn’t for the Spanish people that stood here, this wouldn’t be a neighborhood. Because we stood here when it got bad.”

Team

Shannon Carroll

Shannon Carroll is an artist, filmmaker and creative entrepreneur based in Brooklyn, NY. She is Founder and Creative Director of Vivid Story, a studio harnessing the power of visual storytelling for causes. She produces compelling visual narratives for social enterprises to increase their impact and authentically connect with core audiences. As an experienced collaborator, she brings her skills spanning video production, photography, virtual reality and interactive design to engender empathy and catalyze engagement. Shannon is a graduate of Tufts University and was a UnionDocs Collaborative Fellow.

Federica Sasso

Federica Sasso is an Italian journalist and radio producer based in New York City. She writes for Italian outlets and is a contributor to the Swiss national broadcasting company for which she produces audio documentaries. Sasso was a 2012-13 UnionDocs Collaborative Fellow and studied documentary film at the Scuola di Cinema, Televisione e Nuovi Media of Milan.

Andrew Hinton

Andrew Hinton is a documentary filmmaker drawn to individuals and stories with positive change at their heart. His most recent film Tashi & The Monk won two awards at its premiere at Mountainfilm in Telluride, MT. His previous film Amar was the 2012 Vimeo Documentary Award winner. He is from the UK but now lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Jen Epstein

Jen Epstein is a researcher, writer self-shooting media maker who has devoted many years to working as a manager in film and television for a variety of New York Post-Houses and Media Companies. She’s currently an Operations Project Manager for Discovery Communications.

Her passion for documentary arts began while working as a production assistant/researcher on several documentary features including BrotherMen, a performance based documentary film that aired nationally on PBS. She holds a BA in Communication Arts from Ramapo College of New Jersey, and earned an MA in Media Studies with a concentration in Documentary Studies from the New School.

Credits

Produced by Shannon Carroll, Jen Epstein, Andrew Hinton, and Federica Sasso

Special thanks: Pejk Malinovski, Lu Olkowski, Craig Sinclair and Robert Anasi

UnionDocs Collaborative Studio Director: Toby Lee

UnionDocs Artistic Director: Christopher Allen

2012-2013 Collaborative Fellows: Andrew Hinton, Anthony Simon, Beyza Boyacioglu, Constanza Mirré, Emilia Bilińska, Federica Sasso, Jen Epstein, Maria Rosa Badia, Michael Vass, Parul Wadhwa, Sebastian Diaz Aguirre, Shannon Carroll, Tamer Hassan