
Independent Lens
Deaf Jam
Aneta Brodski discovers the power of American Sign Language poetry. She prepares to be one of the first deaf poets in a spoken-word slam.
A former symbol of urban decay, the South Bronx is also known as a creative breeding ground and for its enduring cultural spirit.
Henry Chalfant studied at Stanford University, where he majored in classical Greek. Later he pursued a career as a sculptor, exhibiting his work in New York and Europe. He turned to photo and film documentation in order to do an in-depth study of hip-hop culture and graffiti art. Exhibits of his photos include the O.K. Harris Gallery and the landmark New… Show more
Steve Zeitlin served as co-producer of From Mambo to Hip Hop, a documentary about the South Bronx funded by ITVS, and broadcast on public television across the U.S. as part of the Voces series of Latino Public Broadcasting. He received his Ph.D in folklore from the University of Pennsylvania, and is the director and cofounder of City Lore, an organization… Show more
Elena Martínez, is staff folklorist at City Lore. She holds two M.A.s (Folklore and Anthropology) from the University of Oregon. Martínez is primary fieldworker for City Lore’s South Bronx Latin Music Project, conducting interviews with musicians, and researching photographic and archival collections. She is also researching hip hop culture in the… Show more
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There’s a postage stamp of urban sidewalk known by people of a certain age for having burned to the ground. A more recent generation knows it as the place where hip-hop was born. An older generation remembers the time that this turf produced a New York Latin music sound that came to be known as salsa. From Mambo to Hip-Hop: A South Bronx Tale is an hour-long documentary that tells a story about the creative life of the South Bronx, beginning with the Puerto Rican migration and the adoption of Cuban rhythms to create the New York salsa sound; continuing with the fires that destroyed the neighborhood, but not the creative spirit of its people; chronicling the rise of hip-hop from the ashes; and ending with reflections on the power of the neighborhood’s music to ensure the survival of several generations of its residents, and, in the process, take the world’s pop culture by storm.
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