Bronx Film Wednesdays 2019 – BxFW: MAY

Bronx Film Wednesdays 2019

What happens when your car drives your life? The first documentary film sponsored by DocTV Iberoamerica in Puerto Rico, and winner of the Sun Coast Chapter Emmy award for Best Cultural Documentary, Karen Rossi’s ISLA CHATARRA (Scrap Island) answers this question by looking at the deep dependence and obsession with automobiles on the island. Puerto Rico is one of the places with highest vehicular density in the world. Rossi’s documentary captures the comedy and the tragedy of the situation, offering a complex and catastrophic view of global/local car culture and its dire environmental consequences.

“Puerto Rico is …. a nation on wheels, although it does not have a local auto industry. It has an average of 86 cars per hundred residents; approximately 15,000 cars enter its territory each month. Only a documentary on wheels like Karen Rossi’s Isla Chatarra can capture the urban flows and multiple speeds of the nation on wheels. This documentary keeps track of the different speeds of development, consumption, and identity in a society that continues to express the contradictory aspects of car culture.” –Juan Carlos Rodríguez, New Documentaries in Latin America (Palgrave, 2014)

Karen Rossi studied film at the New York Film Academy and began her career as Assistant Editor to Alfonso Cuarón in the production of Y tu mamá también. She has for 20 years worked as a documentary filmmaker, director and editor, mostly in Puerto Rico where she was born. In addition to Isla Chatarra, her other works include the short fiction films, Bizcocho (Cake); ¿Quién eres tú? (Who are you?), of the series 100 Minutes of Women’s Voices; the experimental video The Painter’s Subconscious and the educational documentaries Success in Seville and Algo Más (Something More). With support from Women Make Movies, Rossi also developed La Pegaron en Taiwan (Made in Taiwan), which tells the story of the first Puerto Rican artists to be commissioned for a public art project in Taiwan. She is founding member of Asociación de Documentalistas de Puerto Rico (AdocPR) and a lifelong advocate of independent cinema.

7PM Film Screening – Followed by conversation with Louis Perego Moreno (Tío Louie)