Squatters

“I wish the world would be more like this house.” — written on the wall in Apartment 3D

“The walls were filled with scribbled comments left by visitors. Music played constantly, shifting from tango to blues and then salsa; the swirling smoke and collective euphoria were contagious. The door to 3D, Ricardo’s apartment, was always open. Everyone in the building was welcome. On the stairs leading up to 3D, dolls, photographs, and random bric-à-brac were plastered onto the cement. The building itself was a work in progress, with unfinished floors and ceilings. It was a unique and magical place.

I had recently arrived in New York in 1995 to study film, and at times I felt the loneliness of being away from my homeland, Colombia. Umbrella House soon became my refuge; I could go there for comfort whenever I needed. All I had to do was call up to Ricardo’s window in 3D. He was always there for his friends, no matter the time of day. I experienced many moments of happiness there and was inspired by the many artists who visited. It was during this time that I made my first audio recordings and shot my first 16mm footage of his apartment and the building.

Many years later, Ricardo died, and an urge arose in me to recover the material and tell his story. Grief brought me closer to him and to his sanctuary, Umbrella House—an abandoned building he helped restore and turned into his home. I began filming everything I could of his apartment: the walls covered in poetry, the books, the photographs. I interviewed his wife and other squatters who lived in Umbrella House, and combined this material to make a 10-minute short titled Umbrella House. But when I finished the film, I realized it told only the beginning of a longer, more complex story about an important chapter in New York City’s history.

Others had also become invested in its trajectory. When Orlando, another friend, saw the film, he became emotional and said, “I took Puerta 10 [another squatted building]. I was a squatter and filmed hours of footage of the process of its reconstruction.” After seeing his material, my curiosity grew, and I felt the need to expand Umbrella House into a longer documentary that would include Puerta 10. I began by interviewing Orlando and searching for more archival footage. I contacted another squatter, Isabel, who I was told had many photographs from when she first moved to Puerta 10. I ended up interviewing her. She was the first woman I interviewed, and her experience of raising her children under these conditions made me realize the importance of including different perspectives. I then decided to interview Geanne, another woman squatter in Umbrella House, who led me to Steven and Siobhan.

Interviewing Steven and Siobhan was crucial to the development of the documentary because they—alongside a Dutch squatter named Geerta—were among the people who originally took over Umbrella House. That is when the pieces began to fall into place: the stories of all the building’s inhabitants intersecting in countless ways. I realized how little I had known about a place that, to me, had simply been where my friend Ricardo lived.

As the documentary progressed, I came to understand the risks these squatters had taken in living on the margins of the law while pursuing their ideals. Their resilience deepened my admiration for them.

Their process of reconstructing and restoring both Umbrella House and Puerta 10 became intimately entangled with my own process of filming and editing Squatters. Their desire to build their own utopia mirrored my own desire to make a film that captured the spirit of their story. I hope that Squatters continues to reach wider audiences and inspires a sense of creativity, freedom, and hope.”

– Catalina Santamaría, Director