New York Memories

In this filmic memoir, German director Rosa von Praunheim returns to New York, a city he knew and loved in the woolly 1970s, to see what he might find and also to check in on the colorful protagonists of his 1989 documentary, Überleben in New York. Both a personal journey and a historical survey, New York Memories captures a transformed city by charting the shifting course of gay life, from Warhol Factory figures to the AIDS ravaged, within it.

Because of the film's choices of text and illustration were made so well – and because the natural anatomy of memory is so like that of cinema montage– the movie's effectiveness is very great, and it stands as a worthy initial exploration of the medium in which Mr. Boultenhouse has wrought so well. –Wallce Thurston, Kulchur #16

Dito Montiel, a successful author, receives a call from his long-suffering mother, asking him to return home and visit his ailing father. Dito recalls his childhood growing up in a violent neighborhood in Queens, N.Y., with friends Antonio, Giuseppe, Nerf and Mike.