This past weekend, Caribbean filmmaker brothers Eli and Kahlil Jacobs-Fantauzzi brought their annual Fist Up Film Festival to Manhattan’s Loisaida Center for three days of programs centering identity, fostering understanding, inspiring discussion, and building connections between and across diaspora. With immigration taking center stage in this NYC pop-up of the Bay Area staple now in its 16th year, the Fantauzzi Brothers use film as a site to inspire and effect change by bringing together a chorus of films and their teams to cultivate community in a time of growing division.

Leading with their mission statement, “We believe that a good film can change your life. We believe that some films are made to be discussed,” Loisaida Center became the focal point of this majority volunteer-led, 100% POC-led film festival. Immigration, cultural preservation, environmental justice, reclamation of identity—the films chosen as part of Fist Up are works that challenge audiences to think critically about the world, and feel empowered to spearhead the changes we’d want to see. Firmly for us and by us rooted and guided by the words of Audre Lorde that “it is not our differences that divide us [but] our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences,” Eli and Kahlil spoke with us about this year’s programming, why they decided to bring this festival to New York City, and film as a medium for action.

*Fist Up Film Festival NYC Pop Up.* Learn more here.

For 15 years, the Fist Up Film Festival has brought filmmakers together in the Bay Area. This April, you’ve brought it to NYC for the first time. What was the impetus behind the festival, and why did you decide to bring it to the East Coast?
When we finished our first film Inventos: Hip Hop Cubano in early 2000’s, we wanted to submit to film festivals. Through that experience we learned how expensive it was to submit and attend festivals to promote one's film. We also know that many people can not attend festivals because the tickets are so expensive. So we created our own festival and turned everything on it’s head. A film festival that is community based and has been FREE for 16 years. Free to submit and free for the community to attend.

The Fist Up Film Festival presents films that have a local impact. By placing emphasis on the connected experiences between global and local communities, the Festival creates visual parallels between local people’s lived experiences with stories from around the world. The Fist Up Film Festival builds an artist/community alliance while making films and filmmaking an integral part of dialogue and social change, and challenging societal structures and perceptions from the world around us.

Thanks to the Artists in Action fellowship from Action Lab, we are able to have our first ever NYC Pop-Up festival. We’ve both lived in New York and were excited to be able to share this experience with our people on the East Coast

*Eli and Kahlil Jacobs-Fantauzzi. Courtesy of the Jacobs-Fantauzzi Brothers.*

As Caribbean, Boricua filmmakers, why was it important for you to show this body of work at Loisaida Center?
The Loisaida Center is a historic Boricua community center that emerged in the Lower East Side in the 1970s. Despite the threat of gentrification, the community is still active and very alive. As Caribbean and Boricua filmmakers it is an honor to be able to bring the films that we have selected to this historic Puerto Rican neighborhood. For us it is also a personal achievement. Our father was born in Spanish Harlem and we remember being young and coming to LES to visit cousins and familia. To be able to screen our series and our personal film (We Still Here/Nos Tenemos) at the Loisaida is a dream come true. We are super excited and looking forward to continue building community and bringing our communities together through our love for film.

Still from *The People Could Fly* (2024). Dir. Imani Nikyah Dennison.

At the core of the films for this year’s festival is social justice. Why did you choose these films to be in dialogue with one another?
From immigrant rights to environmental justice, from cultural preservation to land preservation, we seek films that cover a range of topics wherein the common threads are unification and the amplification of individual and collective voices. In many of these stories, communities unify to engage in acts of resistance, take a stance for social justice and racial equity, and to effect tangible change. The Fist Up Film series mission is to think outside the box and create spaces for communities to come together and learn from each other. We create spaces that engage and inspires folks to take action and become change agents.

This year’s program opened with a screening of Si Yo Pudiera Quedarme, a story about two undocumented mothers in Colorado seeking sanctuary in churches. What does this film mean in today’s context?
On March 17th, Jeanette Vizguerra, one of the protagonists of Si Pudiera Quedarme, was detained by ICE in Denver, CO. This film screening is a way to follow Jeanette’s case, become aware of what is happening in our country regarding immigration and find ways to TAKE ACTION to support Jeanette and her family.

In the film, we see these two mothers organizing and activating the mainly white faith communities who are grappling with the idea of how to put their power, privilege, and faith into action to support their undocumented sanctuary guests. The film explores friendships and relationships that develop between Jeanette, Ingrid, and their white allied hosts, while focusing on the learning and unlearning necessary to be an effective ally towards undocumented communities.

By screening this film we will help to connect communities to frontline organizations like Make the Road and Justice Power, that serve these families, allowing all participants to deepen community knowledge, learn from existing community wisdom, and provide opportunities for direct action and activism. "We firmly believe that “It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.” Audre Lorde

The festival’s shorts program screened films exploring culture, immigration, and identity across diaspora. Rooted in cultural memory, how do these films speak to the transformative power of remembrance through storytelling?
We screened The Game God(S), a powerful film narrated by Oakland poet laureate Ayodele Nzinga that delves into how Black communities navigate survival through underground economies forged by centuries of systemic racism and exclusion. We also screened Anansi the Spider by Jared Hall, which adapts the classical African/Caribbean folktale into a unique and vibrant animation, and Boat People, an animated documentary that uses the striking metaphor of childhood memories—where a mother rescued ants from sugar water and later received the favor back—to trace one family’s daring escape across the turbulent waters of history. The collection of films will help us envision where we want to go by remembering who we are and how we got here.

Stills from *We Are Taino.* Available to stream here.

The festival ended with a screening of your work, We Still Here/Nos Tenemos, a film centering the youth of Comerío, Puerto Rico as they organize and lead in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. As products of the diaspora, what moved you to document with moment?
In response to the government’s disregard and poor relief management during Hurricane Maria, young residents from Comerío, Puerto Rico activated themselves by taking control and transforming not only their lives, but their community. We Still Here introduces the incredible youth of Comerío, navigating the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, a disaster that brought an unprecedented level of devastation to an island already in economic and political crisis.

We are Puerto Rican social justice activists and culture-keepers who have been making independent films for 20 years.

Before ever thinking about making a film about recovery in Puerto Rico, I was in the community rebuilding brick by brick. I arrived there within two weeks of Hurricane Maria with boxes of donations gathered by Puerto Ricans in the Diaspora. I joined with local organizations Coco de Oro and La Maraña to address the immediate needs of the people and to re-imagine a long-term self-recovery plan.

From the beginning of this project, the youth we worked with showed interest in photography and video production. Immediately we came together to offer workshops and through those workshops the youth formed a communications group called Mensajeros de Palomas. They have been collaborators on the film from day one. From donating a Canon 70D camera to creating the first edit of the film and watching it together, to flying them to New York for the world premiere in front of a full theater and receiving the “Best Feature Film” audience award at Urban World Film Festival, it has been an amazing journey. This intimate process of collaboration has been life changing for everyone involved.

Watching the way the youth showed up, what lessons did you learn from Comerío that you still walk with today?
The world is living through increasing, and catastrophic climate change impacts, with the most significant burdens falling on Black, brown, and indigenous frontline communities. The We Still Here Impact Campaign is a timely disrupter to these troubling trends. We know that every frontline community we visit will bring to the We Still Here Impact Campaign experience their own reality, expertise, and ingenuity. As these diverse experiences connect to the powerful stories of youth-led just recovery models in We Still Here, the results will be a cross-pollination of knowledge that is able to benefit larger social- and eco-justice ecosystems. These ecosystems will continue to grow and strengthen as the We Still Here impact campaign travels to more and more communities.

Our non extractive approach to engage communities around climate resilience, just recovery principles, and storytelling, inspires new and regenerative pathways of climate activism by catalyzing authentic exchanges of knowledge and strategies. Our success is centered in the collaborative nature in which we approach this work. We know that when we honor and respect people’s experiences and create spaces of mutual trust, compassion, and love, the sharing of experiences widens exponentially. Communities feel safe, and even excited to share their knowledge and experiences. This leads to relationship-building, healing, personal and community growth, and profound positive impacts for frontline communities. This is what we learned and continue to learn from our collaborators in Comerío.

Still from *We Still Here/Nos Tenemos* (2021). Dir. Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi. By Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi.

Screening We Still Here/Nos Tenemos in such an important, historic Puerto Rican enclave in New York City, what do you hope the diaspora takes away from the film?
Our primary audience for We Still Here are the communities currently living on the frontlines of the climate crisis and political and ecological injustices. These frontline communities are those communities that have experienced, are experiencing, or will experience the impact of climate and political disasters. The film, accompanied by the We Still workshop, will inspire impactful conversations about climate resilience. It will show what just recovery and just storytelling can look like today and for generations to come. We know that our Boricua community in New York is up against so much right now and to see young people in PR get together and help each other build the future they deserve and will inspire our community in NY to do that same. It will serve as a reminder that Nos Tenemos (We Got Us). We know that these conversations and visioning will eventually blossom into a thriving reality.

Film has the power to educate, entertain, connect, and serve as a mirror. What does the power of film as a vehicle for change mean to you?
My dedication to visual art has always been deeply connected to my commitment to social justice and the belief in the transformative power of storytelling. As a filmmaker, I use a storytelling approach that I created as a student at U.C. Berkeley called Participatory Action Filmmaking. Similar to Just Storytelling, this is a regenerative style of storytelling that cultivates and amplifies stories instead of mining or extracting them. Participatory Action Filmmaking seeks to understand the world by applying the power of community engagement to storytelling in order to affect change. In contrast to many documentary filmmakers who use the "fly on the wall" approach, separating themselves from the story being told, Participatory Action Filmmaking is an immersive and justice-oriented approach that centers community-driven collaboration, equity, respect, and transparency. The strategy has transformative results as seen in We Still Here and is a core part of my artistic aesthetic.

We Still Here/Nos Tenemos: The Jacobs-Fantauzzi Brothers’ Commitment to Comunidad Through Fist Up Film Festival

(ES) We Still Here/Nos Tenemos: Los Hermanos Jacobs-Fantauzzi, Su Compromiso a la Comnunidad, y Fist Up Film Festival

(ES) Que Viva La Salsa: Cultura, Ritmo, y Alma con Brandon Espinosa del Salsa Project