Red Roots is a center for arts and social change located in the South Bronx. We coordinate a variety of arts workshops, political events and educational resources to help build sustainable, self-determined communities in New York City.
Hours:
Monday: 12pm - 7pm
Tuesday: 12pm - 7pm
Wednesday: 12pm - 7pm
Thursday and Friday nights for special events!
If Red Roots has been looking snazzy lately, it's because the crew has been doing fix-its: caulking leaks in the roof, installing our sign and makeshift gutter (minus a drain spout), building a new utility shelf and zine racks, setting up new computers in the space, and organizing / alphabetizing the lending library.
In the summer of 2006, a broad-based, non-violent, popular uprising exploded in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. Some compared it to the Paris Commune, while others called it the first Latin American revolution of the 21st century.
But it was the people’s use of the media that truly made history in Oaxaca.
A 90-minute documentary, A Little Bit of So Much Truth captures the unprecedented media phenomenon that emerged when tens of thousands of school teachers, housewives, indigenous communities, health workers, farmers, and students took 14 radio stations and one TV station into their own hands, using them to organize, mobilize, and ultimately defend their grassroots struggle for social, cultural, and economic justice.
"Piñero" tells the story of the explosive life of a Latino icon, the poet-playwright-actor Miguel Piñero, whose urban poetry is recognized as a pre-cursor to rap and hip-hop. After doing time in hard-core Sing-Sing for petty thefts and drug dealing, Piñero's prison experiences developed into the 1974 Tony-nominated play Short Eyes. The resulting notoriety and fame was too much for the Latino bad-boy genius who retreated to the darker corners of New York City.
Lee Hirsch spent nine years putting together the ambitious documentary Amandla! A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony. The film records the history of music being used as a form of social protest against Apartheid in South Africa. Interviews and archival footage help to tell the tales of figures like Hugh Masekela, Miriam Makeba, Abdullah Ibrahim, and Vuyisile Mini. Mini's songs became such a powerful social force that his remains were exhumed and reburied in order to show proper respect after the end of Apartheid. This look at political oppression and the courage required to fight it was screened at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival.
A labor of love for Academy Award-winning director Steven Soderbergh (Traffic, Ocean's Eleven) Che features a career-defining performance for Benicio del Toro (Sin City, Traffic) in the title role which one the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival 2008.
The first film in Soderbergh's two-part Che Guevara epic tracks the charismatic revolutionary as he joins Fidel Castro's band of Cuban exiles and journeys to the island on a leaky boat in 1956. From these humble beginnings, the small team of rebels mobilize popular support and recruit an army which will ultimately topple the US-friendly regime of dictator Fulgencio Batista, while Che himself undergoes a transformation from a simple doctor to one of the most iconic political figures of the modern age.
