Rayly Aquino

Two queer Dominican men living in Bronx, New York, navigate modern-day relationship's trails and tribulations while trying to keep their love afloat.

Often discussed as an urban legend or a failed architectural project, Solomon Riley Presents Negro Coney Island redresses the erasure around Riley’s completed amusement park for the Black Residents in Harlem and the Bronx in 1924 on Hart Island. Working across archives, contemporary footage of Hart Island, and speculative interviews with key Black cultural producers of the time, including Riley, the film reimagines what we know about Negro Coney Island and its legacy with New York City’s still active potter’s field, Hart Island.

A short film shot underwater and featuring an all-BIPOC, deaf cast performing a poem in American Sign Language.