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2005年7月
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Kid from Project Inspires Filmaker by Jared McCallister
Daily News Article
July 10 2005 |
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When Jamaican-American filmmaker Selena Blake first met Cozart Ruffin, she had her doubts about him, but now, the 25-year-old Long Island City resident is one of her heroes.
Ruffin had traveled a path taken by too many young people in the city's Queensbridge Houses. He had several run-ins with the law and is on probation for a third-degree weapons possession charge. But for him that's in the past, before he learned of his mother's life-or-death need for a kidney.
"At first I thought he was a thug," Blake said, referring to Ruffin's typical inner-city attire. "When I got to know him, I thought he was a really cool kid," she said. Blake calls Ruffin a hero for donating a kidney to his mother in February, staying out of trouble and consistently looking for a job and finding work.
Ruffin - who is now employed and buoyant about getting into the film industry - is concerned about a recent arrest that seems unfair. He was arrested and charged with criminal trespass for entering another building in the housing project he lives in.
On May 5, Ruffin was coming from a Queensbridge building across Vernon Ave. when he was stopped, questioned and arrested by housing police officers.
Ruffin feels the arrest stems from the lingering bad rap the housing project has in the minds of authorities.
Reports of drug dealings, gangs, related crimes and arrests have dominated the news about Queensbridge in recent years. To keep the drug problem under control, police have kept up a visible and active presence in the project.
But sometimes, innocents get caught up in the enforcement initiative at the project, said Blake, who is creating a documentary about famous and exceptional people from the complex. She hopes to counter the negative image the houses have and show that most Queensbridge residents are law-abiding.
"That's the problem going on here," she said, noting the lack of activities for young people in the neighborhood.
"He [Ruffin] wants to be a filmmaker, but here's nothing here for teenagers and young people; there are no resources," said Blake, who wants to establish a youth center after completing her film.
Originally published on July 10, 2005 | |  |
2005年7月
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By Clem Richardson
New York Daily News
July 4, 2005
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Selena Blake doesn't live in those Queensbridge Houses.
Not the ones in the news, riddled with drugs and violence.
Blake has spent almost 20 years in her Queensbridge Houses, in Long Island City, Queens, in the shadows of the Queensboro Bridge, and she says they are not like that anymore.
Blake's Queensbridge, the largest housing project in the country with 96 buildings and more than 15,000 residents, is a safe place, close to Manhattan, where even between jobs she can make the rent and afford to feed herself and her son.
And living there, she said, allowed her as a single parent "the freedom to be a mom" to her son, Daniel Brown, 18.
"The rent was low enough that I could afford to take jobs where I could be here when he got out of school every day," said the caterer, actress and model, who has appeared in a few "Sex and the City" episodes and several magazine shoots. "I could attend all the school functions and meetings because I didn't have to work all the time to pay the rent. I felt perfectly safe here, because people were looking out for us."
And though she had seen the bad days - "before I moved here, I had never seen so many young men standing around on a corner," she said - the place has improved radically since 2001, when police increased their presence.
Blake wants more people to see Queensbridge that way.
That's the idea behind "Queensbridge: The Other Side," a documentary on the complex that Blake has been filming during the past year.
Yet all of her experience in front of the camera hadn't begun to prepare Blake for work behind it. For instance, at first she hired a professional film crew - at a couple thousand dollars a day.
They lasted a week - the same time her money ran out.
Then there were the film permits, surety bonds and insurance, costs that had to be met even when Blake said she didn't know how she would pay her rent.
"I've had a few eviction notices, and sometimes I have no idea why I started this in the first place," she said. "But every time I start thinking I want to stop, something comes up to keep me going. The money appears from nowhere, or someone calls to tell me how much they enjoyed talking to me. That keeps me going."
With a crew of volunteers and sometimes wielding the camera and sound equipment by herself, Blake said she has captured more than 75 hours of interviews with Queensbridge residents past and present.
She has wrangled talks with NBA star and Queensbridge native Ron Artest; rapper Nas (Nasir Jones), another local made good, and still is trying to nail one with legendary rap producer Marlon (Marley Marl) Williams, who, with MC Shan, created "The Bridge," an early rap megahit about life in Queensbridge.
She has gotten New York Supreme Court Justice Carol Robinson Edmead, actor Mel Johnson, assemblymen and -women, court officers, police officers and sometimes-reluctant residents to sit for her. Advertisements in neighborhood papers and word of mouth got her a sitdown with a group of Jewish and Italian-American women who grew up in Queensbridge back in the 1940s - the project was opened in 1939 - who met just so Blake could capture them on camera.
Her interview subjects produced hundreds of still pictures that also appear in the documentary.
Blake also found Greg Larkin, a professional film director and producer, at a Black Filmmakers Foundation mixer. Larkin said he was so impressed with Blake's drive to finish the project that he signed on.
"I see this as an opportunity to tell a great story," Larkin said. He noted that when Queensbridge residents were mostly Jewish and Italian, "There were a lot of social programs available that they used to get out of the projects. Those programs don't exist here anymore, and that means it's more difficult for people to be as upwardly mobile."
Blake estimates she has sunk about $50,000 into "Queensbridge" and probably needs about as much to finish it.
Queensbridge ready for its closeup
To learn more about Selena Blake and "Queensbridge: The Other Side," go to spaces.msn.com/members/maynovproductions/ or E-mail her at maynovproductions@msn.com.
Originally published on July 4, 2005
Clem Richardson writes the City Beat and Great People columns. Prior to joining the Daily News in 1993, he worked for New York Newsday, the Miami Herald, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Atlanta Journal-Consitution and the Anderson Independent newspapers. The Duke University graduate is married and the father of two.
crichardson@
edit.nydailynews.com
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2005年5月 Film about 'The Bridge' hopes to dispel myths By Matthew Monks 05/19/2005 The NBA's Ron Artest and rapper Nas are among a handful of celebrities who grew up in Queensbridge Houses. But those stars are outshone by the country's largest housing project in a documentary wrapping up this summer in Long Island City. Producer Selena Blake is out to dispel the city-run development's bad rap as a haven of drugs and crime in her full-length film, "The Bridge: The Other Side." "My vision was to show people the other side of Queensbridge," said Blake, a single mother who raised a son inside the 64-year-old development that made headlines in February when police broke up a 37-person drug ring that for years had treated the neighborhood like an open-air cocaine market.
"We've got a handful of people (here) who are not very good to other people, to themselves. It's just a handful," Blake said during a recent interview inside her apartment. "Most are decent people like myself. I don't consider myself a hoodlum. There's hundreds of us. There's thousands of us. You don't hear about the hardworking average people. You hear about the drugs."
Blake wants to change that with her independently financed film, a labor of love that started out last summer as a modest project but now consumes her life.
Artest and Nas are among the four dozen well-to-do Queensbridge natives who describe in the movie how the massive, 26-building project locals call the "'Bridge" figured into their success. Others include State Supreme Court Justice Carol Robinson Edmead and actor Mel Johnson.
Blake has little filmmaking or editing training, so she hired a New Jersey crew at $1,000 a day to tape her first interviews. Five filming dates later she was broke. Despite the dent in her finances, she was hooked on the project.
It surely would have fallen through last fall had she not met 48-year-old Gregory Larkin, the former communications technology director for Jamaica's Allen AME Church and director of Queens Public Television's York College Branch.
Larkin at first agreed to give Blake some technical advice on cheaply shooting and cutting a film. But the woman kept badgering the Jamaica resident until her passion won him over.
"The reason I got involved is because I saw the level of work" she was putting into it, said Larkin, who is billed as the feature's director. He recalled telling himself: "This person here, she's doing this with no knowledge, no background in film. This person should be rewarded in some way."
For $200 a week Larkin is putting in 14-hour days to help Blake realize her dream. It's an expensive one: She has racked up $30,000 in credit card debts.
"American Express has been my sugar daddy. Unfortunately, it's the kind that wants my money back," Blake said. "Every single dollar that I have made goes to this project. I can show you eviction letters for not paying the rent ... I've thought about everything I can sell. My car is up for sale. I've got a pair of size 12 shoes - do you know anybody who wants to buy them?"
She wants to have the first cut of the film by September.
Reach reporter Matthew Monks by e-mail at news@timesledger.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 156. ©Times Ledger 2005 2005年3月 Company Mission: “Public Awareness from the Inside Out” MayNovember Productions L.L.C. investigates controversial subjects from the inside out by presenting realistic viewpoints through personal experiences of the people by the people. We evoke reasonable doubts in viewers to challenge stereotypes,
and educate inquisitive minds connecting them to the other side. We strive to produce programming without borders; and without ethnic, cultural or religious bias in an attempt to tell the true essence of the subject’s story. Our target audiences watch network, cable, municipal and public broadcasts, purchase DVDs as well as download and stream Internet content media.
Documentary Objective: “Present The Other Side of a Misrepresented Community” The Queensbridge Housing Project documentary compares and contrasts urban essentials to the suburban values of the “American Dream.” “Home Sweet Home” is a place called, ‘”The Bridge.” Selena M. Blake – Executive Producer/Journalist
Born in Jamaica, West Indies Ms. Blake still enjoys the success of her commercial modeling and acting careers. She reminisces how her years at Queensbridge supported her through tough times.
The actress/model can be seen in mega-picture walk-ons and speaking roles such as Spiderman, Hurricane Carter, Best Man, Death To Smoochy and Changing Lanes; television programs HBO’s Sex and the City, NBC’s Law & Order SVU, and TNT Network’s Monday Night Mayhem. Print advertisement and top agencies still tap Selena for high profile corporate clients: American Express, Revlon, Eckards, Phillips, Saturn, Parade Magazine, All Woman Magazine (Cover), AT&T, The New York Times, and many more. Synopsis
This documentary is based on the lives of the people, like my family, living in “The Bridge;” the Queensbridge Housing Project.
It’s not about drug dealers, crackheads or prostitutes. These segments of society are not the majority of the 15,000+ residents who reside here. The majority of Queensbridge residents are hardworking multi-cultural, multi-ethnic families trying to make ends meet; keeping their children off streets and in schools. The history of “The Bridge,” is told through the stories of these residents. This documentary speaks of their struggle for change, success in career and life, of those who remain, and those who have moved away; yet many continue to support the community. The interviews share and reveal an awareness of the community’s triumphs and tragedies. The Queensbridge community would be no different from Westbury Long Island, Scottsdale Arizona, Scarsdale New York or even your neighborhood; if in these neighborhoods, 15,000+ people did not live on top of each other within a six block radius with limited resources and assets. However, we all face the same challenges of raising a family and coping with the daily grinds of life. This documentary shows that Queensbridge is home in the truest sense of the “American Dream.” It is no bed of roses, neither is it a bed of thorns. Heralded as the New York City’s community of choice for post war veterans and their families,1939 marked the construction completion of the Queensbridge Housing Project.“ “The Bridge” from inception was built as a stepping stone for families to save up enough money to buy a house, or rent a larger apartment. A few decades later, most families were unable to achieve the same goals as their predecessors, due chiefly to economic disadvantages. Now, second and third generations of low income families are trapped in a community which was not designed for permanent living. These families and individuals try to survive the perils of life in a place they call home, the best way they know how. “The Bridge” is a place based on emerging ethno-social and religious cultures. Queensbridge has left it’s mark as an important part of New York City’s urban history. |  | |  |
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