Director Andrea Meller and producer Nikki Borelli sat down with senior editor Roxanne Bogucka after a SXSW screening of their film 156 Rivington, chronicling the life of the artists’ collective ABC No Rio, which got its start as a squat in the Lower East Side two decades ago.

Roxanne Bogucka: Tell me please, each of you, what you did on the film. What was your role, Ms… Meller or Miller?

Andrea Meller: Meller.

RB: Sorry about that.

AM: I directed the documentary, came up with the idea.

Nikki Borelli: And I came on and produced it.

RB: Okay Ms. Meller, how did you pick this story?

AM: I had been a volunteer at ABC No Rio for almost a year before starting the film, and really what first got me was, I went to their web site and read about their history. And was really fascinated by the idea that a group of artists took over an abandoned space to put on an art show about real estate, and then 20 years later, we’re being evicted from the same neighborhood. So that’s where it started, and then it kind of grew from there to the fact that it really showed a lot of issues about community and the role of art in politics, and just kind of urban planning issues that really were interesting to me.

RB: And if you could tell me a little bit about how long y’all… over what period of time and what your budget was and your crew.

NB: Okay, budget’s a little hard. I would say, give or take, $150,000. What it was is, it was produced by Mixed Greens. It was privately funded, it’s part of a new director program. And so it’s one of three films. And we were given very, you know, standard roles of the film and what we were supposed to do, and shoot on DV for. And we produced the film over a year. So I guess we shot for about six months, and edited for about four, five months. And we completed the film in May of 2002.

RB: And your crew was?

NB: Um, we hired, it was very small doc crew. We had Chad Davidson was our director of photography. Greg Sirota was our editor. And Lisa Guidetti is also producer that’s not here. She can’t make it. And that’s it basically. Oh, sound, yes and Greg McKean was our sound guy. And that’s it.

RB: Okay.

NB: And basically for Mixed Greens, the supervising producers were Nancy Roth and Selina Lewis [Davidson], who is also here right now.

RB: I’m a little curious as to whether y’all saw the movie that played right before yours, called Flag Wars. Got anything to say about that?

AM: I actually, I really enjoyed it a lot. It was a really different way to make a film about a similar issue. I mean it’s different—

NB: It is different, but still about the development of a neighborhood. And how neighborhoods change. And I really enjoyed it. I did enjoy it.

RB: What do people feel about, I mean this is very ironic, you know? Oh the irony! Gentrification.

NB: It’s mentioned in the film. Yeah, the irony.

RB: They’re aware.

NB: Yeah, they’re very self-aware.

RB: And what sort of, so it’s going to become a community space now. And what sort of role is it going to play in the neighborhood? I’m not clear if we simply didn’t see it because a documentary can only be so long, or what, but it seemed to be more a space unto itself and not so much of an outreaching space. And people were talking about that later—starting the photography class for kids or that sort of thing. So what sort of role do they want to play in the Lower East Side neighborhood now?

AM: Well the Lower East Side neighborhood is constantly changing so I think it’s an interesting thing to try to attract community while the community is always changing. But they do do certain community kinds of activities, like the photography classes have been happening for a few years now. And they, also the computer center’s open. Everything is open and free to the public. I think it’s sometimes hard to attract people though. Because it is definitely a lot of people that are in the know about the space. It’s intimidating to walk in there. Like the one critical viewpoint, Jack Black, said: It’s very, you know, if you walk in and people aren’t very open, just receptive to what you need, what do you want to do, that sort of thing. But anyone can walk in there and use the darkroom, use the computer center, use any of the facilities, so it’s just, you have to be [garbled]. And there are a few activities that do make an effort to reach out to the community.

RB: I noticed in your interviews, there were many people from ABC No Rio, of course. And then there were a couple of neighborhood people. There was one woman who lived across the street in a rent-controlled apartment or something like that. Did you, how did you go about getting neighborhood people to speak? Did you have a tough time?

AM: We didn’t actually have a tough time with anybody, getting an interview with anybody. The neighborhood people, it was whoever was around. We would go into stores. I did a lot of research before, just going into stores and talking to people about the movie. And seeing what they had to say about ABC No Rio. And the woman on her cell phone, she was just standing outside. I think Nikki ran up to her when she saw her leave the building next door. We wanted someone from the building next door. The Spanish-speaking woman we found in a hair parlor, diagonally across the street. There’s always people around in that neighborhood, so…

NB: Always people, especially on a weekend. The Lower East Side is packed with just people outside when it’s warm and sunny. So it wasn’t hard.

RB: The Spanish-speaking neighbor there, I was particularly interested. Did she for example go to ABC No Rio after? Did anybody show up that you’d talked to? Making this contact between interviewer and interviewees and then they said, “Well I’m going to go check it out.”

AM: No, a lot of them didn’t know actually what went on in there. And they, because I think the most visible side of ABC No Rio is the punk scene, the hardcore shows. So you see a lot of kids hanging out in the street and that’s what you think the space is about. So I think a lot of people were surprised to learn that there’s other things going on there. And that was exciting, to be able to impart that information to people. But… now I lost my train of thought.

NB: Actually we talked to some people and they said they have been in there for an art show or something like that, too. So it did vary. People were varied. Like, “Oh, what goes on there?” and they were interested in what we were telling them. And then some people were, “Yeah, I’ve been in there once or twice” and they would talk about it in relation to neighborhood.

RB: One thing that was a little confusing to me, there was a man who I guess was a contractor or a realtor, Mr. Mizrahi? And I wasn’t quite clear what his role was in the evolving story.

NB: He’s one of the largest realtors of the Lower East Side. So every building that’s around ABC No Rio, the building actually next door, had a sign with his name on it. So we really wanted to, or I wanted to talk to someone from the development angle just to see what they have to say about how the neighborhood was changing, if they knew of ABC No Rio, what they thought of it, and just get a little bit of the backstory of the changes in the neighborhood.

RB: I really liked the animation. Could you talk a little bit about the title animation that was done?

AM: The animation was done by Max Panzer. And part of my feeling in making the film, because there’s so much art that goes on in ABC No Rio, I really wanted to include art in the documentary as well, through music and through this animation. And yeah, I had seen his web site, which is boobytrap.org, I think, and just fell in love with how filmic it looked. So that’s where that came from. It was also really just a good way to transition from one time period to another.

RB: What did you, when you were volunteering before you made this film you were volunteering at ABC No Rio, you were doing film and new media, or what?

AM: I was in new media. They have a web site at interactivist.net, which covers issues that aren’t normally covered by the mass media. So they did one on housing and homelessness. They did one on transportation issues. They did one about the community gardens that are… being taken over for housing. So, and that’s articles and also web videos. So I do editing and then writing for them.

RB: When you decided to do this story did you initially see it as a very… it’s a pretty traditional-looking documentary. And you saw that from the beginning, or…?

AM: No. Well. That’s a good question. I think there were a lot of limitations just by having one year to make a story. You know I’d definitely, I wanted to go in and kind of follow people and have it be more verité, but within one year you can’t really get that. So we kind of went in between talking heads and then a little bit of verité, like following a meeting and then including the historical section. Yeah, it did turn out really traditional, but it’s my, it’s also for me a really amazing learning experience because I had never made a film before. And I really wanted to just learn how to make a documentary. And sticking to a pretty traditional format for me was useful just to see how it was done even.

RB: So what did you learn? I mean you probably learned, oh, this many things, you know, but is there a really big one?

AM: I have to think about that for a… It’s really hard to make a movie. [laughs] I mean the one thing that I learned was just the importance of collaboration, and how important it is to have people that you feel good about and comfortable with and who are creative and smart around you. I think that was a really amazing part of the year for me. Yeah, and that it’s hard.

RB: [to NB] Had you produced before?

NB: Nope. Never. This was my first time producing. We, I also produced one of the other first-time director films, which was, you know, they were both going on around the same time too. So that was kind of difficult but it was a great experience. This film was, it was so much work and we put all of our life… Andrea started off with the passion and got us all passionate about it, all the collaborators, and we had a lot of fun making this film. It was great.

RB: So how did you get the gig as producer when you hadn’t produced before?

NB: Well I’ve worked on documentaries, but not in the.. I’d APed and, I had produced before but not in the full, feature-length film, docs.

RB: Congratulations to you both on your film.