Documentary

Buffalo and All That Jazz (in Post-Production)
DV, 30 min. work in progress
Producer: Joy Scime
Director: Vincenzo Mistretta
Buffalo and All That Jazz investigates the impact of jazz on race relations by exploring the question, did jazz as an art form erase the color line or did jazz as a business exacerbate it? The story of jazz in Buffalo, New York offers a means to examine this question because the city produced and nurtured many famous musicians and was a place where every jazz musician of note performed. Yet a dichotomy existed in Buffalo that goes to the heart of the documentary’s principle question.

Women in Black, Buffalo
DV, 30 min. 2004
Director/Producer: Vincenzo Mistretta
Women in Black is an international network of women and men who stand for an uncompromising commitment to justice and a world free of violence. In Buffalo, NY they started protesting after the bombing of Afghanistan and have been standing once a week in a silent vigil since. This documentary chronicles their weekly vigil for three years and it’s a testimony of their perseverance and commitment.

Clay Made Me Something:  The Art of Being Louis Dlugosz
DV, 30 min. 2004
Director/Producer: Andrew Golebiowski, Vincenzo Mistretta
Louis F. Dlugosz, (1915 – 2002). The sculptor-steelworker’s only formal art training was at the old Art Institute of Buffalo. After serving two years in the U.S. Army, he returned home and launched his career. Using his “pretzel-bending” technique, Dlugosz rolled clay into strips and bent them together for a lattice-work effect, resulting in sculpture with an open rather than a solid interior His work was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Beaux-Arts School and the Louvre in Paris. This Documentary reveals Dlugosz’s life not only as an artist who lived his art but an excentric who made art to change the world around him.

Voices of Difference
DV, 20 min. 2001
Director: Sandra Boero-Imwinkelried, Vincenzo Mistretta
Producer: Maria Saccomando Coppola, Rita Clement
This Documentary investigates the stories of three women who have immigrated to Western New York: one from Ireland via Scotland at the turn of the last century; another from Syria in the Middle East in 1991 and the last from Guyana in South America in 1994. The contrast between old and new immigrants creates a new perception of diversity in our community that can be used for educational commitment.