At the southernmost end of Alexander Avenue just across the Harlem River from Manhattan sits an independent school that has been teaching the Bronx’s youth about the power of storytelling for nearly a quarter century now.
The Ghetto Film School in Mott Haven is by no means distasteful as its name, taken literally, implies. It’s actually quite the opposite.
Located on the fourth floor of one of the sector’s old piano factories, the facility is complemented with hardwood flooring, aged brick painted white and natural light seeping through its many oversized windows. From the conference room, decorated with a simple elegance (just one long table, chairs, a whiteboard and a piano) one can see a mural bearing the borough’s name atop a nearby building.
But while the school teaches its students about the power of story, the story of the school itself continues to be heralded by people from every corner of New York City, and all around the world.
The school finds a home in Mott Haven
The nonprofit Ghetto Film School was founded in 2000 by Bronx social worker Joe Hall, and has since opened locations in Los Angeles (2014) and London (2020).
Just before the school’s inception in 2000, Hall had returned from a stint at the University of Southern California’s graduate film program.
According to a 2007 feature in the New York Times, Hall “quickly became disillusioned” during his time studying at USC — almost all the students in the film program were “white and wealthy, and most had family connections to the movie business,” a world unlike the one he knew working at home in the South Bronx.
In the early 2000s, Mott Haven looked a little different than it does now, although many defining characteristics remain the same.
The neighborhood, basically located as south in the South Bronx as one can get, like the rest of the borough was reeling from decades of hardship before…
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