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