Up and Coming Director Unveils Doc Film “West Side Familia”

Taylor Michele Hosking’s idea for her first film documentary came about during the pandemic, as she sat on the terrace of her apartment on West 93rd St. and Columbus, where she’s lived her entire life, and watched a poignant scene full of rich history unfold on the street corner below.

It involved La West Side Familia, a Puerto Rican biker gang from the 70s whose members still live in their area. “They were scaling the traffic light pole to hang a Puerto Rican flag on the corner while everyone else was singing the Puerto Rican flag song [“Que Bonita Bandera”] around them,” Hosking, 29, recalled. “And so this whole just incredible scene unfolded. And you know, in the pandemic, how a thing felt like a movie and everything was very emotional and dramatic.”

The Upper West Side native spent two years working on the project, which involved interviews with 40 subjects including gang members, their family and those from their community at neighborhood events. Her goal was to retell their storied past of protecting their tight-knit community, “because so much of that history has been lost to time and lost to gentrification,” she explained.

Part of the financial backing for “West Side Familia” was made possible by a grant from the NYC Women’s Fund for Media, Music and Theatre, which is sponsored by the NYC Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, in partnership with New York Foundation for the Arts.

Hosking, who received $18,000 from the Women’s Fund, was one of 72 recipients this year, who received a combined total of $1.3 million from the city for their projects from fiction shorts to theater productions to music. This year, the initiative, which was first announced in 2018 and has awarded a total of $10 million in grants, marked its final round of working to combat “the underrepresentation and equity challenges that women have historically faced in the media and entertainment industries.”

The University of Pennsylvania alum was honored to receive the award, and hopes it helps her documentary, which is in its final funding phase, spread its message to larger audiences.

”It’s touching to me that it’s coming from the city of New York itself,” she said.

”My hope is that this project is able to play at film festivals around the country and around the world, and really inspire marginalized communities to look into their histories and not assume that just because they haven’t had books or movies created about their people before, that there’s no significant story there, because there’s an adventure waiting.”

You were raised on 93rd and Columbus. Are you still living in the same apartment you grew up in?

Yeah, I grew up in the same building as my mom. It was really a beautiful thing to grow up with your grandparents living upstairs and hearing a lot of stories of the area. My mom was lucky to get her own rent-controlled apartment in the same building shortly after I was born. I am now taking over the space with a roommate and giving it our 20s spin.

Tell us about your background in journalism, working for The Atlantic and Vice.

My first job out of college was the Atlantic’s Fellowship Program. I studied urban studies, which is part of my fascination with these city stories. That’s what led me to initially go into political journalism, writing at The Atlantic during Trump’s first year in office, and just being thrust into the deep end of that world. While I was there, my reaction was like, ‘Swim away.’ But I became much more engaged with culture journalism and culture writing and still talking about issues of social justice and racial and gender inequality, but through more of the lens of talking about film and music culture and things like that. And so that’s what led me to become a culture staff writer at Vice, where I was basically just building out a beat for myself.

Is “West Side Familia” your first documentary?

After being in written journalism, I went into podcast producing. So I’ve done a number of audio documentaries for NPR and The New Yorker and places where they really toil over all the words in the way it’s coming together. That was what gave me the courage and confidence to be able to lead my first film documentary. I initially was pursuing it as a short and now it’s become this feature film and it’s pretty exciting ... It’s definitely taken on a life of its own.

What inspired the film?

In the pandemic, I was sitting on my childhood terrace and this whole scene unfolded on the corner with these guys, elders in the community who were in this 70s biker crew called La Westside Familia ... And so this guy, Chino, who ended up becoming the main character of the film, who’s the godfather of that quote unquote gang ... He is standing on this flagpole as the flag is billowing in the wind, looking out over the neighborhood.

What was the research process like?

It initially was led more by the interviews and getting to know these people. And finding out about Chino being part of the Young Lords and part of the Black Panthers and was a part of the Puerto Rican independence movement in the 70s ... And as I got to know more of the guys and the crew and their stories, it just became this way of retelling the story of the history of this neighborhood from a black and Puerto Rican perspective. Because so much of that history has been lost to time and lost to gentrification and to all these other really famous Hollywood stories that have been told about this area that have had carte blanche to define what this area is. And [”Sex and The City” character] Carrie Bradshaw being based in the quote unquote Upper West ... and “Seinfeld” ... it’s a very white and wealthy view of the area and what the average person familiar with pop culture knows of the neighborhood.

How can you explain what the West Side Familia is?

West Side Familia started off as a kind of local gang or crew at a time in the early 70s when there were many of those that were protecting their local community and making sure that violence and crime was down and protecting people from police brutality and also advocating for communities and policy and community organizing work. And so I thought that was a really interesting lens on the idea of a gang or a crew that a lot of people don’t really know about and understanding them from that lens not only helps to humanize people of color more, but it also helped to shape the heart of the reason that I even wanted to tell the story in the first place. I grew up very aware of this intense bond and intense connection that the neighbors around me, who have all been here for decades together, have with one another, and it seemed like there was something to it, like they had all been through something.

How did you find its members? Are they still living on the Upper West Side?

Yeah, most of them are. It happened organically, one person introduced me to the next. That’s also why I was interested in this story, because when you hear stories about gentrification, it’s about total displacement, people who are not there anymore coming back, looking back. But this is about people who refuse to leave and have found ways to stay and are continuing to find ways to preserve their traditions that they’ve had for decades that neighbors have tried to end and put in complaints about, such as the flag, their neighborhood reunion block party. Even vigils, people have been calling police on their vigils, for gathering because someone passed away.

What was something you learned about the Upper West Side through your research?

I learned through this process that the reason why this area of the Upper West was not totally leveled and destroyed and rebuilt the way that other parts of the Upper West Side were like Lincoln Center or the San Juan Hill community, was partly because of the squatters movement here and people banding together to resist the forces that would seek to destroy strong black and brown communities.

To learn more, visit www.westsidefamiliafilm.com