Break and Enter (Rompiendo Puertas) (Newsreel Collective, USA, 1971)

This film captures the militant antecedents to today's housing reclamation movement in New York City. In 1970, several hundred Puerto Rican and Dominican families reclaimed housing left vacant by the city. They pulled the boards off the doors, cleaned and repaired the buildings and moved in. Established in December 1967 as Newsreel, an activist filmmaker collective, this NY group grew to become a network with chapters across the US. Its different chapters produced and distributed short 16mm films covering the anti-war and women's movements, Civil and human rights movements, getting unique access to such groups as the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords Party. Newsreel's activism attracted many artists who became well known filmmakers - Norman Fruchter, Susan Robeson, Robert Kramer, Christine Choy, Tami Gold, Allan Siegel and Deborah Shaffer, among others. The New York Newsreel became Third World Newsreel (TWN) in the mid-70s and strengthened its commitment to developing filmmake