Alum Film Shines

HBO Runs Film About Family in Crisis

In line with the Oberlin tradition of political activism, two Oberlin alums have co-created a film called Nuyorican Dream that has aired on HBO three times in the last month.

Director Laurie Collyer (OC '89) and Robert Torres (OC '90) met and became friends post-graduation in San Francisco. After six years of hard work with Big Mouth Productions and John Leguizamo (one of the film's executive producers), it went to the 2000 Sundance Film Festival. It is also winner of the Joris Ivens Award at the Cinema du Reel Film Festival and Audience Award for Best Documentary at the L.A. Outfest 2000 Film Festival.

Torres' mother Marta, of Puerto Rican descent, raised him in Brooklyn, N.Y., along with his two sisters and his brother. The documentary of Torres' life focuses on his impoverished environment, his ability to supercede environmental expectations and continue past high school into college.

According to the Sundance Synopsis, "Collyer's camera catches harrowing images of a family in crisis: sisters Beti and Tati struggle with devastating drug addictions, brother Danny spends half his life in prison, and mother Marta supports the entire extended family through welfare and selling homemade pasteles and used clothing on the street," said Shari Frilot.

"We have to look at what things are inhibiting people of color and of poverty to have access to the world. Once we get into these communities we are actually perpetuating our own destinies. We wind up creating a cycle. This film is a hope for me to exemplify how we perpetuate ourselves in a negative way," Torres said.

Torres spent time working at a shelter for homeless youth in California as a teacher. He later founded and became the principal of an alternative middle school in the East Village called the 12th Street Academy. More recently, he has begun working on a new school in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, a poverty stricken area of New York. Filmmaker Laurie Collyer, Torres' best friend since about 1990, worked as a teacher's assistant at a school for special education students when she met Torres. Her first short film was called Thanh, and focused on a Vietnamese student who suffered from cerebral palsy.

"[Nuyorican Dream] premiered at Neil Young's Bridge School Benefit Concert, and went on to screen at the National Educational Film and Video Festival, Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival among other national and international film festivals," according to Big Mouth Productions Website.

Collyer told Oberlin Online in July, "It's not fair that some people have to grow up in the conditions of poverty this family has grown up in. Period. That was the whole point of making Nuyorican Dream. I just ignored the naysayers and went about my business."

As a result of the film's good reception, four schools including Princeton and Harvard are flying Torres in to be a guest speaker. In respect to Oberlin, Torres says, "It was among the most transformational experiences in my life." He attributed his strength of character to teachers in high school and beyond, saying, "Teachers in my life were hugely instrumental. [English professor] Pat Day and [Spanish professor] Anna Cara were huge influences. Those relationships served to get to a different side ‹ to broaden my sense of the world."