Pam Sporn

"Detroit 48202" examines the rise, demise and contested resurgence of Detroit through the lens of mail carrier Wendell Watkins and the residents he has faithfully served for 30 years. The resilient Detroiters on Wendell’s route share stories of pushing against racial segregation in housing, challenging industrial and political disinvestment and living on reduced pensions as a result of Detroit’s bankruptcy. They also share stories of hope and propose creative ways to re-imagine an inclusive, equitable and productive city. Foregrounding the voices of African-American working class Detroiters, it offers a nuanced and complex understanding of a city at the crossroads.

This documentary traces the tangled paths and multifaceted identity of a black Cuban family in the Bronx. The subjects of this film experienced firsthand some of the great historical events of the 20th century – they saw Castro’s arrival in Havana and had their neighborhood bombed in the Bay of Pigs invasion; one son fought in Vietnam and a daughter marched against it. Both working-class and professional, black and Latino, foreign and native, Spanish-speaking and English-speaking, the family is shown in the constant process of negotiating its identity. On their arrival in Miami, the family immediately encountered racial segregation, and as children in a mixed Puerto Rican/African-American neighborhood in the Bronx, they were forced by their playmates to choose their identity: “Are you black or Spanish?” Even the family’s roots in Cuba are complex - the grandfather was the son of Jamaican immigrants to Cuba – and their relation to the Cuban Revolution is ambiguous.