Elodie Saint-Louis and the filmmaker discuss her recent documentary about the eponymous biker gang.
For years, journalist Taylor Hosking never gave much thought to the Puerto Rican flag that would go up on the corner of 93rd and Columbus every year. Like all traditions, it seemed inevitable, a routine occurrence. That all changed one day when Hosking witnessed a curious scene from her terrace: a man deftly scaling a traffic light pole, wielding a Puerto Rican flag in his right hand. It piqued Hosking’s interest, and a flurry of questions followed.
That man was Chino, known to many as the Godfather of West Side Familia, a Puerto Rican-led biker gang and activist group that emerged in the seventies. Although Hosking is a third-generation Upper West Sider and of Puerto Rican origin, the history of West Side Familia was unknown to her. Hosking’s curiosity led her down an unexpected path, resulting in a film—her first—that pays homage to the political, social, and cultural contributions of the neighborhood’s Nuyorican inhabitants. It’s a fascinating journey that chronicles the squatters’ rights movement, a coordinated takeover of buildings slated for demolition by the city, and how break-dancing, popularized by the Rock Steady Crew, took the world by storm. Although the film features a rich tableau of characters, including legendary graffiti artist George “SEN-1” Morillo and Hosking’s family members, Chino is the film’s heart and soul. He is a tireless chronicler of the neighborhood’s past, a legacy Hosking takes on through the creation of the film.
Following West Side Familia’s premiere at the BlackStar Film Festival in Philadelphia, Elodie Saint-Louis spoke with Hosking about the process of making the film, the history of resistance movements, her sources of inspiration, and more.
ELODIE SAINT-LOUIS: How did it feel to have the film premiere at BlackStar?
TAYLOR HOSKING: It wasn’t the first time I’d seen it with a group of people. We had a couple of fundraiser screenings and friends and family gave feedback along the way, but this was the first time showing it at a festival to a public audience, so it was major.
I’ve loved BlackStar since I went to UPenn. I saw the festival when it was smaller and on campus, and over the years have been coming back in the summers with my friends as a kind of reunion. There’s such a genuine filmmaker community here. I was really excited when the film got in, to be able to show it here and have this filmmaking community I really respect alongside my whole family, and Chino came down, too.
ELODIE: How long have you been working on the film?
TAYLOR: It’s been three years. We shot one summer, then cut together a rough version of the story that fall and winter. We shot again the following summer, did more interviews, fleshed it out, and cut that together. Last year was really every week, every day, pushing the ball as much as possible—siphoning everything down, doing the archival agreements, and finishing the fundraising.
Last year was probably our most consistent and heaviest work year, so it felt really good to move into distribution. When you’re in the middle of it and don’t know when it’s going to end, it feels like forever. Looking back, three years sounds reasonable, but it felt like a much bigger deal when we were a few years in.
ELODIE: You come from a background in journalism, writing, and podcasting. How did you know you wanted to tell the story in this particular medium? Have you always wanted to make films?
TAYLOR: I came into journalism originally writing about politics and protest culture, and then really found my voice as a culture staff writer at VICE, in the days of very voicey writing and a lot of freedom to talk about whatever you wanted. That turned into a lot of commentary on film and TV. When I went into podcasting, I was often working on shows that were companions to film and TV or culture analysis shows.
During the pandemic, when everyone was doing their life pivots and reevaluations, I really wanted to focus on filmmaking. I had become so interested in the medium through all the stories I was telling, and that was when I decided to write my first scripts. This happened to be the first project that had a real shot at being completed out of everything I was developing at that time.
A lot of things happened when my mom passed. I saw Chino scaling a traffic-light pole in the middle of Manhattan and put two and two together. There was this flag I had loved seeing go up every year throughout my childhood, but I’d never thought to wonder who put it there. I realized they were a group my mom had told me about and had helped me understand as keepers of the culture, people who used to protect the community back in the day. I thought, “Oh man, I’ve got to do a story on these guys.”
At first I didn’t know whether it would be a photo-forward article or something else. I knew it needed to be visual, but I didn’t think I had the skillset to lead a film. Then I was talking to a friend about wanting to do something on them, and she volunteered to be the DP. It suddenly felt accessible; I’m just going to go do this thing with my friend and see how it goes.
That first day, Chino was telling that funny Trader Joe’s story and talking about having been in the Young Lords and Black Panthers, and I could tell there was so much more to dive into. A lot of people advised me to make it a short because it would be more bite-sized and feasible, especially with all the fundraising challenges. But creatively, I knew the story was there to tell the history of the neighborhood through their lives and to bring in why it matters to me, too.
ELODIE: What was it like making your first film? What was the most challenging aspect?
TAYLOR: My strongest transferable skill was being an interviewer, someone who can do a bunch of interviews and pull them into a narrative. I think part of the reason why the film turned out a little essayistic is because I’m so used to explaining the narrative and then dropping in a quote. It naturally developed that way because of my comfort with writing and story producing. There was a big technical learning curve, and I had to rely on the people around me to fill in some of those gaps until I knew more about what equipment we needed for certain situations.
Financially, that was probably the biggest question mark. It wouldn’t have been nearly as expensive if it weren’t an archival-driven project. Archival is so expensive. I used the support I got early on from friends who helped us make strong samples for grants and get letters of recommendation. I hired a grant writer to go over everything. That’s what led to the first grant from the NYC Women’s Fund. We got a rec for Latino Public Broadcasting’s grant. Once we got that, we knew we were at the very least contracted to make an hour-long feature.
We didn’t get any more grants between then and the premiere, so we got some really great executive producers to help fill in the gap and fundraise within our community. That period of wondering whether another grant was going to come through and whether we needed another fundraiser, was probably the most challenging.
ELODIE: Were you familiar with the fundraising process?
TAYLOR: No. I’m familiar with selling podcast ideas directly to a studio and selling ideas to people who will pay for the entire budget up front. That’s much more in my comfort zone than anything philanthropic. This was really different and intense. Thank God it’s a story I’m genuinely passionate about, because otherwise I don’t know if I could have made some of the asks I made.
ELODIE: What are the plans for distribution? Is PBS the idea?
TAYLOR: Right now we have a non-exclusive domestic distribution license for four years with PBS. We’re hoping it can get on American POV.I got to chat with them a bit at the festival, which was exciting. We’re still figuring out what show on PBS it’s going to be on, but I’m feeling good about the momentum of those conversations and looking forward to seeing where it goes.
What was so wild about the funding situation was that Trump came into office. A lot of granting opportunities went away, and that changed the landscape for projects like this as well as for PBS’s ability to fill in funding gaps.
ELODIE: That idea of having to go to the community feels like a throughline in the film. You feel the importance of mutual aid and this sense of solidarity between different groups. I’m not in organizing circles, but in general, it just seems like there is less synergy. There was a period when all these movements were feeding into each other, and I was thinking about the importance of remembering that as a possibility.
TAYLOR: That was definitely part of the intention, to make sure that it felt like a highlight of this renaissance period where these separate movements came together to support one another’s causes. I think that’s really important today, when there’s so much conversation about class and about low-income people needing to come together, when within that are particular struggles and particular groups that can’t get lost in order to just bring people together in a general sense.
“It was like, “We’re going to put all of our power into what you’re asking for your community.”” That was the only way Puerto Rican independence became a significant part of the national conversation and [gain] momentum in the ’70s.
ELODIE: What was your relationship to that history growing up? What were some things that surprised you?
TAYLOR: I actually didn’t know much at all about the history of the Puerto Rican independence movement, or the liberation movement to make fiPuerto Rican’s lives better on the mainland and not be treated as second-class.
I had no idea about forced sterilization, doctors making paperwork confusing for Puerto Rican women and tying their tubes without them understanding what they had agreed to, horrific things these activists would mention. I’d be like, “What are you talking about? How did I not know this was happening en masse?”
There were many shocking, surprising things I learned about the state of things for Puerto Rican people on the mainland and what they were fighting for, as well as the way in which everyone came up with big ways to make themselves heard: marching into the UN or taking over a radio station, the Statue of Liberty protest. It was exciting to see how creative and effective they were.
The extent of the crack epidemic in the neighborhood was another big surprise. I knew it was a horrific thing that came through New York, but I never would have assumed that people I grew up around had any significant firsthand experience of going through that since I never heard a word about it. It’s such a preppy, upscale neighborhood today that I had assumed it might not have been so big where I grew up.
ELODIE: Do you want to continue making films? What are you working on next?
TAYLOR: There are a couple of narrative projects I was pitching when this took off, and I want to make sure I give them their due diligence. One is a 60-minute pilot that I’m thinking of developing as a feature,about four Black girls in middle school in the early 2000s at this very preppy, white, all-girls school. It’s the seventh grade, bat mitzvah season, and they’re all trying to figure out who they want to be in this world but are at war with each other because they have very different interpretations of what it means to be Black in that space. They’re trying to formulate their personal politics while having their first experiences with racism, classism, sexism. It’s kind of a will-they-won’t-they realize that their sisterhood is significant and stop going at each other long enough to come into themselves in a healthy way. But the early-2000s bat mitzvah season of it all will make it fun, too.
I’m also interested in a ‘Little Manhattan’ sequel. We mention in the film that’s an example of the other side of the Upper West Side that has been more popularly shown.In that context it seems slightly critical. but it’s actually one of my favorite movies. I have some fun ideas for a sequel centered on a young Black girl and how a story like that would be different from her perspective but still have the same DNA, what everyone loved from the original.
I’m interested in a film about Whitney Houston from the perspective of the queer community. People being out to the queer community but not out to the world is an intriguing space to me, that liminal space of celebrities that may or may not have been queer but [whose] fashion and aesthetics contributed to the liberation of the queer community regardless.
ELODIE: Were there filmmakers or films you looked to for inspiration while making ‘West Side Familia’?
TAYLOR: One of the biggest inspirations was ‘The Stroll’ on HBO, about the sex-work community in the Meatpacking District. That film did such a good job of getting inside a community that is kind of unto itself, capturing their love for one another and how they played a significant role in one another’s lives while also telling a classic New York story.
It had a lot to do with drastic neighborhood change and that contrast of, “I cannot believe this was happening here, and now it’s this,” but imbuing emotional depth. That ability to go small and deep into this community, but make it universal and a classic New York story, was the pinnacle in my mind.
ELODIE: What do you hope people take away from the film?
TAYLOR: I hope that it helps counteract this climate of fear around resistance movements and supporting and being active within them. Right now, especially with the state of the economy, people are so focused on the next check that it can be hard to even think about collective liberatory futures. On top of that, there’s a climate of hopelessness around supporting movements and having any momentum.
I hope to remind folks of a heyday and that the country was arguably more oppressive than it is now at that time. We should really be thinking harder about what it means to move in groups. Maybe we need more groups and collectives, and for groups to be less about individual posturing on social media and more about supporting the collective.
When it comes to people in communities under threat of displacement, there is a way to stay and make your community’s identity known in the local story and identity of your city.
I hope, for people who do want to make a film, that they feel they can talk to the elders in their world, collect that information themselves, put it out there and know that’ll be received. I got a lot of inspiration from the number of different traditions, whether it’s Rumba in Central Park that’s been around for decades, or the Neighborhood Reunion Block Party. How key they are to preserving the fabric of this community. And anyone can create a tradition that feels unique and resonant to them. If it matters to you and the people in your world, that’s what gives it longevity and meaning.
Another part of the intention was to create a sense of urgency around telling these stories. There were people who passed away during the making of the film. Not only people in the film, but figures who didn’t get to see it. That helped keep a sense of urgency for me.and I wanted to make sure that was within the film, too. Time really is of the essence for speaking with elders and preserving legacies.
ELODIE: What advice would you give first-time filmmakers, especially people who want to work in documentary?
TAYLOR: Definitely keep a stable job so you can have the creative freedom to meander if it’s necessary for the story.
Having worked on articles and podcasts before telling this story was really helpful because I had a solid understanding of story pacing and structure. To the extent that younger filmmakers can work in shorter storytelling formats and hone that general skill before putting it into something you love can build that confidence.
It’s also helpful to come to festivals like BlackStar, where you see people who might be your age or newer to the industry who have accomplished something that feels exciting and artistically elevated, and get to know some of them and what their stories were as far as getting their projects off the ground. I’d recommend The Gotham Project Market. You get one-on-one meetings with festival programmers, financiers, and producers and can build relationships with festivals like Tribeca, Sundance, and SXSW that feel daunting.
