Movie will confront Latino homophobia

 Mott Haven is the backdrop for new film

Local actor, playwright, and director Juan Shamsul Alam is taking his award-winning autobiographical play Zookeeper and its resonant South Bronx themes to the silver screen.

Shamsul Alam and his co-director, Mott Haven resident Lou Torres, a veteran actor and producer, have hired area Latino actors to help give the script the authenticity it demands in addressing its core theme of anti-gay prejudice. The film is being shot on location in Mott Haven and other South Bronx neighborhoods.

The play was first produced in 1992 and won a McDonald and a Brio, among other awards. It recounts the author’s struggle to overcome his own biases against homosexuality when forced to take care of his gay brother after he contracted AIDS. Shamsul Alam’s brother died three years after contracting the disease.

Along with its theme of homophobia in Latino communities, the script reflects elements of the author’s rough and tumble upbringing on the mean streets. Before turning to the theater for his muse, Shamsul Alam was a heavy drug user who shuttled in and out of jail.

Prior to earning his living as an actor when he became involved with the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater and The Family Inc., the author recalled, he leaned heavily on his acting skills to dodge the law.

“They would take me home and my mother would open the door and the officers would tell her that if I was arrested again they would have to send me to Youth House,” he said.

He regularly used fictitious names to deceive the police, but local officers had him locked up in juvenile jail when they caught on.

Actress Ana Reynoso, who will play the wife of the film’s conflicted protagonist, has worked with the director in other plays, such as “La Pared” and in films, including “Once Upon a Time in El Barrio.” She said she was anxious at first about playing a role outside her comfort zone, but that she has since overcome those fears.

“I had to put myself in her situation. I had to feel it and really get into character,” she said.

Reynoso says Shamsul Alam has unusually democratic qualities for a director that help put actors at ease. They don’t hesitate to express their opinions about the script to him, she said, and added that residents from the community are encouraged to join the set when scenes are being filmed.

“Other directors, you can’t get near them or near the scene. But he sees people, and says ‘oh yeah, go ahead and get in the film,’” she said.

Shamsul Alam says it’s important to create as true-to-life a film shoot as possible, by including community members, and by avoiding what he refers to as “fake roles,” which in the case of Zookeeper means casting only Latinos in the film.

Mainly the movie’s shorter scenes have been filmed so far, while Shamsul Alam and Torres seek funding to continue filming through crowd sourcing sites like Indiegogo and Kickstarter.

Shamsul Alam hopes that most of the filming and editing will be completed in the next six to eight months. The finished product will be an 83-minute feature, he said.

Torres is eager to enter the feature into film festivals, including Sundance and Tribeca. The duo has yet to pitch the movie to a distributor but is considering marketing Zookeeper digitally, in light of the success Torres had selling his acclaimed film Manito via the Internet. That 2002 film also centered on the streets of the South Bronx and featured unheralded actors from the neighborhoods it depicted.

Shamsul Alam and Torres hope the film will serve not only to address an important topic and to entertain, but will also inform audiences unfamiliar with the South Bronx about the local creative groundswell, and that it will attract young Mott Havenites to film and theater.

“We want it to be an inspiration to people, so that they could become actors, directors or playwrights,” said Torres.

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Angely Mercado

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