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The short-subject documentary — directed by Emma Francis-Snyder and produced by Market Road Films’ Tony Gerber — chronicles the 12 historic hours in 1970 when 50 members of the Young Lords Party stormed the dilapidated Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx and made their cries for health justice known to the world. The Lincoln Hospital takeover resulted in the Patient Bill of Rights, which marks the 50th anniversary of its adoption next year. And though the Young Lords did not achieve its goal of universal healthcare, the bill is still the basis of care to this day.
Emma Francis-Snyder is a New York based activist and award-winning documentary filmmaker. Her directorial debut, Takeover, is shortlisted for an Academy Award. She was one of ten chosen as Vimeo's Best New Creator in 2021. Takeover is part of the 2021 New York Times OpDoc series, was featured as a Vimeo Staff Pick, and shortlisted for the IDA and Cinema Eye awards. She is a 2020 Ford Foundation: Just Films and Open Society Foundation grantee. In 2012 Emma, and co-director, Sara Beth Curtis, received the Rosen Fellowship through CUNY Brooklyn College and traveled to Santiago, Chile, and Montreal, Quebec to film the simultaneous student movements. She is the co-producer of the film, Straight/Curve, and the associate producer of Yoruba aRichen’s award-winning I Rise series.
Carlos Ivan Calaff is a Research Analyst and Reentry Coordinator at the Center for Justice and Justice-in-Education Program at Columbia University. In 2018 he was released from Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, New York. He is currently studying at the School for Professional Studies at Columbia University. He is a proud Puerto Rican father of two boys, a lifelong Bronx native, an unapologetic Knicks fan, and a musician.
Adriana María Garriga-López is an anthropologist and multidisciplinary artist. Born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Garriga-López is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Kalamazoo College Michigan and Associate Faculty of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. She holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology (2010), as well as Master of Philosophy (2006) and Master of Arts (2003) degrees in Anthropology from Columbia University in New York, and a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology and Comparative Literature from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey (2001). Garriga-Lopez’s research has been published in: American Medical Association Ethics Journal; Sinister Wisdom; Human Organization; Critical Public Health; Scholar & Feminist Online; Small Axe; Shima: A Journal of Island Studies; Social Anthropology; the International Journal of Infectious Disease; and New Proposals: Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry, among others. Adriana is also a poet, performance artist, painter, and soprano. Her creative work has appeared in the (2019) anthology (edited by Raquel Salas Rivera), as well as in: Tripwire: Journal of Poetics; Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine; The New Engagement; Cruce; 80 Grados; Sargasso; Ad Hoc; African Writing; The Columbia Review; Beyond Polarities; and Piso 13. You can keep up with her on Twitter by following @anthrorican.
Carlito Rovira was born in New York City in 1953. His parents were among 63,000 who migrated annually from Puerto Rico. Like many Puerto Rican youth during the 1960's, he was impacted by the Black Power and Civil Rights movement. During his most formative years he was mentored by the late Black Panther leader, Bob Collier. Today, he continues to advocate for the independence of Puerto Rico from U.S. colonialism. He is a visual artist, an illustrator, and portraiturist. He became a Young Lord at 14 years old and will remain one until his last breath. Carlito believes that the final chapters of Young Lords history will be completed, not by authors of the mainstream, but on the streets by millions of oppressed people in struggle, destined to bring about the emancipation of humanity.
Neni Panourgiá (moderator and organizer) is an anthropologist, the Academic Adviser at the Justice-in-Education Initiative, and Adjunct Associate Professor at the Prison Education Program at Columbia University. She has carried out ethnographic work on the meaning of history and politics, the institutionalization of the commons, and on confinement, torture, and the apparatus of discipline. Her books have received many awards including the Victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing, the Edmund Keeley Book Prize in Modern Greek Studies, the PROSE award, the Chicago Folklore Prize, and the International Society for Ethnohistory. Her essays can be found in Mousse, Documenta, American Ethnologist, angelaki, Public Culture, and elsewhere. Her new book Λέρος: Η γραμματική του εγκλεισμού (Leros. The Grammar of Confinement) was published in July 2020 in Greek (Nefeli Publishers). It is in its second edition and is forthcoming shortly in English.
Máximo Rafael Colón was born in 1950 in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. He is a New York-based photographer who studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Colón migrated to Brooklyn, New York as a youngster with his family in the late 1950s. Colón’s artistic imagination and political consciousness is informed by his personal history. Like many artists, his photography is an essential part of the effort to remedy and transform a multitude of social injustices. His works have been exhibited in several venues throughout New York City and Puerto Rico and a number of his photographs form part of the Centro De Estudios Puertorriqueños archives at CUNY Hunter College and of the permanent collection at the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. More information on Colón’s artwork is available at: www.maximorafaelcolon.com