If You Succeed.
The recent report that the long-shuttered Liquors is finally set to morph into a new business reminded me of how much I miss that joint. It was a funky, loose-limbed place with casual, refreshingly reasonably priced good food, characteristics that aren’t in evidence as much as they should be by now in this neighborhood’s restaurants. When Bodegas opened, I expected more of the same but was surprised to find it hit-or-miss, with an increasingly obviously disgruntled staff in the last months it was operating. The restaurants (along with their Bed-Stuy sister Lewis & Ruby’s) shuttered abruptly last year, rumors flew, Dana Rubinstein investigated, and the spaces were rented. Just another small business down in flames — next, right?
But these are also people’s dreams we’re talking about. It’s easy for those of us who’ve never established our own businesses to play armchair quarterbacks, but the challenges and risks — financial, emotional, mental — involved in opening and running a store or restaurant are not for the faint of heart. The fortitude it requires is on full display in If You Succeed, an hour-long documentary about Christian Dennery and Dolores Lagdameo’s effort to build on the promise of Liquors by opening Bodegas — as well as their effort to hold their family together. A tantalizing preview of the film is on view here; Fort Greene-based filmmakers Augusta Palmer and Chris Arnold screened it at the Little Rock Film Festival in May and will present it again at the San Francisco Documentary Festival in October. Augusta and Chris are investigating distribution channels, and I certainly hope that at least one local venue — anyone at BAMcinématek out there? — will make it possible for the FG/CH community to see it.
Little Rock native Augusta very kindly took the time to answer a few questions about the documentary, the aftermath of the restaurants’ failures, and Cultural Animal, her company with co-director and husband Chris. Get the scoop after the jump.
Q: How did this documentary come about? What made Christian and Dolores’ story compelling to you?
A: Christian knew I was teaching film at Sarah Lawrence College and asked if I had a student interested in capturing the story of the creation of a new business on a gentrifying Brooklyn block. My husband Chris Arnold and I had been looking for a film to work on together, our first as a filmmaking team, and we were both interested in shooting a story about our own neighborhood, Fort Greene-Clinton Hill. I told Christian I thought I did know “someone” who’d be interested and went home to talk to Chris. Since the primary locations — Liquors and Bodegas — were blocks from our house, it also seemed like a very feasible project for us. Christian and Dolores seemed like (and are) very appealing, charismatic, and ambitious young entrepreneurs. We thought the gamble they were making, risking everything they already had to expand their business, would make a compelling story no matter how it turned out. So, we told Christian we wanted to do the project ourselves and started shooting the next week.
Q: How challenging was the process of filming this documentary?
A: The filming was not extremely challenging; it just took dedication and patience to shoot several days a week for 9 months and then shoot updates every few months for a couple of years.
Q: How much did you shoot and was it difficult to edit down? Was there any footage you would’ve liked to include but couldn’t?
A: We shot over 200 hours of footage, so it took a long time to cut that down to under an hour. There are millions of things I wish we could have included but didn’t add to the story.
Q: Anything that Christian or Dolores asked you to leave out?
A: Christian and Dolores never asked us to leave a single frame out. They were very open with us, dream subjects, in fact.
Q: Do you have any perspective on the subsequent closing of all three of the restaurants?
A: The doc leaves off earlier this year, with all three restaurants closed and a series of lawsuits and countersuits in progress between Christian and his landlords from Liquors, who were also investors in Bodegas. When I last spoke to Christian and Dolores earlier this summer, they didn’t expect any of this to be truly resolved until the end of 2007. I guess my perspective on this is that no matter how hard you work or how charismatic and smart you are about your business, you have to really know and trust the people who become your partners, otherwise this kind of conflict may arise. But overall, I still see Christian and Dolores’ story as very inspiring. It’s better to work toward your dreams than to sit back and play it safe. Moreover, I think their relationship was finally strengthened in this trial by fire.
Q: What other projects does Cultural Animal have in the pipeline?
A: We’re working on a few new projects. Next up is The Hand of Fatima, a documentary about music, mysticism, and family history set largely in Morocco, which should be complete by 2008. It’s being featured in this year’s IFP Market as a work-in-progress. Further down the road, we’re considering several projects, including a doc set in Vietnam that would provide a retrospective look at the war there from the perspective of a Vietnamese man who told the U.S. why they’d never win the war in the mid-1960s.