Flyin' Cut Sleeves

The following clip is from a 1993 documentary on the histories of Bronx Gangs ca. 1970's New York, and the positive social change that ended up coming out of them in the 1990's. Co produced by Henry Chalfant (one of the brains behind Style Wars) and Rita Fecher this timeless documentary is for anyone who has ever wanted to know more about different types of "gang" culture that predate rap.

Flyin' Cut Sleeves, completed in 1993, portrays street gang presidents in the Bronx. The project grew out of the experiences of Rita Fecher, the film's co-producer, who taught in a South Bronx school in the late 1960's and early 1970's, became intimately involved with the gangs, their leaders, and the leaders' families and began to document their lives. Their world was the streets, set against a backdrop of uprooted families, cultural alienation, drugs and violence.

When Rita Fecher returned after twenty years to see what had become of her old friends, she found that they had stayed in the community of their youth, that they were deeply committed to improving conditions there and that they were engaged in helping their own children survive in the hazardous street environment. The documentation of these lives over a twenty-year period offers a remarkable perspective on life in the ghetto (spanning four generations), and the means that people devise to cope from the time that they are children to when they serve as parents and role models for a new generation."

It was recently released on DVD and you can find it here.