DVD-Flyin’ Cut Sleeves

-From the late 1960s into the ’70s, Rita Fecher taught in the South Bronx, a community then riddled with street gangs and violent crime. Rather than shy away from the young gangsters, Fecher got involved, introducing herself to the gang leaders and their members, ultimately documenting their lives in a series of highly candid interviews. FLYIN’ CUT SLEEVES sees Fecher return to the community 20 years later to visit with some of her previous subjects, inviting them to revisit their experiences and reveal the life choices they made in the intervening decades.

-Rita Fecher and Henry Chalfant direct this intimate documentary portrait of gang life in the New York Bronx from the late 1960s to the early 1990s. Set against a backdrop of uprooted families, cultural alienation, drugs and violence, the development of gang culture was not an entirely negative force; in fact, these ‘families’ often had a stabilising effect on the community, enabling the youths to cope with their troubled environment.