‘West Side Familia’: Taylor Hosking On Crafting A New West Side Story With Her Feature Debut About Puerto Rican Biker Gang

The 15th edition of the BlackStar Film Festival opens next week with the documentary feature West Side Familia, the debut film from New York City-based filmmaker Taylor Hosking. Written, directed, and produced by Hosking, the tightly bound 75-minute feature interrogates the trajectory of New York City throughout the 20th and 21st centuries through the lives of several members of La West Side Familia, a little-known Puerto Rican-led biker gang and community group based on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The film weaves together a complex narrative of New York City history and, in parts, is genuinely revelatory in its historical findings. But Hosking explains the idea for the film originated from a simple conversation with a friend. “I had just been speaking with a friend about these guys I saw hanging the Puerto Rican flag on a traffic light on my street corner and how I would be interested in doing a story about them,” Hosking, who is also Puerto Rican, explains. “I had heard stories from my mum about how they were keepers of the neighborhood’s culture.” Watch on Deadline Hosking says that her friend suggested taking a camera down to interview the group of flag bearers during the city’s parade season. “My friend ended up being the DP on the first day, even though that’s not her job. We ended up doing the interview with Chino, the main character, that day. He started talking about being in the Black Panthers and the Young Lords, meeting with the head of Trader Joe’s to keep this flag tradition going. That’s when I realized we needed to dive deeper into this story.” The film’s narrative is shaped around two strands: interviews with members of the Familia, mostly led by the endlessly charismatic Chino, a godfather figure of the movement. Chino was involved in the squatters’ rights campaign and the Puerto Rican liberation movement from a young age. He was even among the group of Young Lords who hoisted the Puerto Rican flag atop the Statue of Liberty in 1977 to raise awareness of the Puerto Rican liberation movement. Bad Bunny recently honored that image in his NUEVAYoL music video. Those interviews are cut together with Hosking’s narration, contrasting her experience growing up in the same Upper West Side neighborhood, but within a vastly different racial and social context due to decades of gentrification. “After doing all those interviews with people and discovering the vibe of the footage, I realized it wouldn’t have made sense to have an expert academic type doing the voiceover,” Hosking says. “I also had a lot to say with my own commentary, so that’s when I became a much bigger part of the film. That was the last piece we built in.” Hosking was previously a staff writer at Vice during what she describes as the “peak era of hot take culture.” “It was a toxic environment online with people just reacting to the headlines. That’s what got me into podcast producing,” she says, “to create an experience and community around the stories that are being shared and allowing people to actually engage with what you’re saying.” Taylor Hosking. Credit: Culturecon Collective. Hosking became a full-time filmmaker during the pandemic. She produced West Side Familia alongside Morgan B. Powell and Tayler Haynes. Exec producers on the project are Jamel Shabazz, Davidson Barsky and Sandie Viquez Pedlow. Amilcar Cariño Charlemagne and Mohammed Rahman were the lead editors, while Emir Lewis served as a consulting editor. The production received financial backing from the NYC Mayor’s Office and PBS through Latino Public Broadcasting. Latino Public Broadcasting currently has a non-exclusive domestic distribution deal in place for the film, but Hosking says she is “definitely open for business,” particularly around international rights. “We would love for this to end up on a Hulu or HBO,” Hosking explains. “Hulu has picked up similar docs in the past like The Savage Life of Lorine Padilla, so we definitely want to make sure to get it over to them.” After the screening at BlackStar, Hosking and her producers are also planning what she describes as a “diasporic tour”, where they will screen the picture in communities across North America with significant Puerto Rican populations before ending with a screening on the island itself. “The idea is to encourage heritage tourism back to the island by people who, like myself, may have known they’re Puerto Rican but had a cursory relationship to it,” Hosking says. “Now is such a ripe time to really dive deep and understand the depth of contribution that we’ve made to American culture.” Hosking is also prepping a feature fiction script. The project, titled TBT, follows the lives of a group of young Black girls at a Manhattan prep school during 7th-grade Mitzvah season in the early 2000s. “I’m also interested in producing a Little Manhattan sequel,” Hosking explains. “I love Little Manhattan, even though we now see it through a critical lens. But I have some ideas about a sequel that I think could be really touching, and also still grapple with the realities of what a story like that would be, with a young Black girl as the protagonist.” West Side Familia opens the BlackStar Film Festival on August 6. The screening takes place at the Perelman Theater at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia. The festival ends on August 9.