On Roots, Storytelling, and the Weight of Sugarcane
Where are your parents from in D.R.?
Where does your family come from in D.R.?
So, mi mama es de... Bonao.
Nació y se crió hasta los diez años en Bonao
y después se mudaron pa’ Santo Domingo,
en una calle llamada la Federico Velasquez.
So, Santo Domingo raised mostly.
And my dad is...
de un pueblesito llamado Vicente Noble
en Barahona, y después, cuando estaba en el segundo
año de high school, se mudó pa’ Santo Domingo.
So, spent most of his life in Vicente Noble, Barahona.
And where were you born?
I was born on Dyckman.
Uptown. Uptown, New York City.
In Dyckman?
Like in the neighborhood.
No, no, I was born, Saint Luke's,
Saint Luke's Hospital on 77th, East side.
And at the time, my parents were living on
40, 40 Thayer Street,
which is in the Dyckman section of Manhattan,
which is the northernmost part of the island of Manhattan.
What's something you're working on right now?
Yeah... I mean, right now I'm working on a project called The Weight of Sugarcane, which is a short film, that the story was created by me, but it was written by my creative partner, called Erik Medina.
And, yeah, it's a short film following the life of—or following the day of—four adult siblings that all convene after living in different parts of the country. They come together the day before their dad's big surgery, who has just recently been diagnosed with a pretty serious... sickness.
And it's a short film where these four adult siblings realize that there's a lot they haven't worked through emotionally and relationally that they've been carrying since young adulthood.
We just finished shooting it in Elmhurst, Queens, here in October.
And we're moving into post-production, and I'm, like, very, very excited about it.
I was very excited about the cast that we got. An all-Dominican cast. A mostly Dominican crew—mostly, I mean, all Caribbean crew—with the exception of one of the crew members.
But we shot in Elmhurst, Queens. All Dominican cast.
It was an incredible set.
It felt just like a family gathering.
En la casa e’ tía. To’ el mundo, hangiando.
And we just happened to have a camera capturing the whole thing.
And I'm excited to get it in post-production and finally get this thing out there.
Dope. But this isn't the first film you’ve made.
It's not, it's not—technically, it's my fourth short film.
But the second short film that is of, you know, higher-quality production,
where we had a real budget with real costs and—
and by real, I mean just, we just had much more hands on deck.
Yeah, I mean, I would technically say it's my fourth short film.
Tell me about that first. That other one.
Yeah, the first one was one that I was really proud of.
For many reasons.
One, I wrote it and directed it,
and had a small acting role in it,
but I was also very proud because I did it alongside my son, who is an actor.
And he played the lead character in that short film.
I was also proud of that short film because we raised all the money for it ourselves.
Very, very guerrilla.
Partnered with an organization called Seed&Spark that helps filmmakers rally their community in order to raise the money that they need.
And that story was really dope.
It was definitely more autobiographical.
It's a 15-minute short film that essentially wrestles with the question:
What would it look like if we gave young Latino boys the permission to cry after losing someone really significant?
And my son playing that lead character—he did an excellent job.
He was nominated for Best Actor at several festivals,
and the movie itself won Best Short Film at a local festival in Atlanta.
But really proud of that movie.
It was a short 14-minute film.
We filmed it all in Atlanta.
Initially we wanted to film it in New York,
but it just became too costly to do that.
But yeah, it's called It Stays With Us.
And you’ve also done... you’ve also written.
Written? Movies or just in general?
A book.
Yeah, yeah, I wrote a book.
Yeah, I wrote a book called Mi Casa Uptown,
which is really just a memoir of my upbringing in a Dominican household.
But particularly my upbringing in uptown New York City,
and how being raised by Dominican immigrants
in a very Dominican environment,
and all of the things attached to my upbringing—like faith,
and family, and art, and place—
how they all played a role in kind of shaping the things that are important to me.
Again, like family, friendship, faith, place, creativity.
Yeah, I wrote that... 2015, 2016, and it was published 2017.
Dope.
Yeah, man. I will say this about the book itself, too.
The book also felt like a very, like a community project.
I wrote it, of course.
I had my buddy Ray Neutron—Ray Spears—take the cover photo for it,
which has my son on the cover as he runs
through the platform of the Dyckman 1 train station.
And Adalis Martinez, another really good friend and also fellow Dominican creative,
designed the cover of it before she passed away in 2020.
So Dominicans touched a lot of that book.
It went through the hands of a lot of Dominicans.