GERMANY: DIRECTOR LEON ICHASO AND ACTOR BENJAMIN BRATT TALK ABOUT FILM "PINERO" ABOUT PUERTO RICAN POET/ACTOR AT BERLIN FILM FESTIVAL

Record ID: 389019

  • Title: GERMANY: DIRECTOR LEON ICHASO AND ACTOR BENJAMIN BRATT TALK ABOUT FILM "PINERO" ABOUT PUERTO RICAN POET/ACTOR AT BERLIN FILM FESTIVAL
  • Date: 10th February 2002
  • Summary: BERLIN, GERMANY (FEBRUARY 10, 2002) (REUTERS)) SMV SOUNDBITE (English) DIRECTOR LEON ICHASO SAYING: "It was wonderful. They were humble, they were proud, they were just in shock that somebody had taken the time to tell their story. What is interesting, what we went through in Puerto Rico, was the place that somehow rejected Pinero and his work and we showed it when we wer
  • Embargoed: 25th February 2002 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: BERLIN, GERMANY
  • Country: Germany
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA3M9BHZPJ8RXRULD4V61LN3SYV
  • Story Text: A film about the cult figure Nuyorican Miguel Pinero has become a cult attraction on the fringes of the International Film Festival in Berlin.
    Miguel Pinero was a Nuyorican - a New Yorker of Puerto Rican descent. He was also a poet, dramatist and an actor and became something of a cult figure, particularly for Latinos living in the USA. A new film about him by director Leon Ichaso starring the US-actor Benjamin Bratt has been showing in the Panorama Special section on the fringes of the International Film Festival, the Berlinale, in the German capital, Berlin.
    Pinero's experimental poetry and prose was suffused with the beat of modern urban living and the rhythms of the street, making him an important forerunner of rap and hip-hop. Pinero's work as a screenwriter resulted in realistic scripts which accurately reflected the criminal violence to be found on the streets of New York. Pinero had first hand experience of this, having often been caught on the wrong side of the law and winding up behind bars himself. While serving a lengthy sentence at the infamous penitentiary Sing Sing for theft and drug-dealing, he wrote the stage play Short Eyes, a moving, hard-hitting record of abuse suffered by a child-molester at the hands of the other inmates.
    Short Eyes went on to become a decisive hit on Broadway.
    In 1976, the play was adapted for the screen by Robert M.
    Young and made into the feature film, Slammer. Although Pinero continued to write for both film and stage, he found it very difficult to reconcile himself to his new status as a notorious underground hero and enfant terrible and simply wasn't up to the demands placed on him by the white PR people from Broadway and Hollywood. He died at the age of 40 in 1988.
    Actor Benjamin Bratt said he loved playing Pinero, "I think I felt most compelling about Miguel Pinero and the opportunity to play him was, the work, the words that he wrote, the passion and the beauty and the strength that existed in his poetry, in his playwriting, a very complex individual.
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