Foreign Parts

In the shadow of the New York Mets' stadium, Willets Point is an industrial enclave marked for demolition. Amid scrapyards and auto salvage shops, Foreign Parts reveals a tight-knit community sustained by wrecks, recycling and precarious lives, observing a neighbourhood facing erasure under New York's urban redevelopment.

Véréna Paravel: 'As I started talking with people, I realised that many of their lives were as damaged as the rusting cars themselves, and I began to get a sense of the hardscrabble, resilient community that had grown up there over many years. From the outset I knew I wanted to make a film that would try to reflect the fragility and violence of the place, the beauty and squalor that reigned, its chaotic ordering. The tiny, bounded urban locality also encapsulated much larger narratives in the history of the country — such as post-industrialisation, immigration, political violence, environmental decay, and the breakdown of democracy.’

J. P. Sniadecki: 'With the absence of commentary, textual explanation, or voiceover, the film allows the viewer more freedom to experience and explore the images and sounds on-screen and more license to interpret for themselves the social dynamics and cultural diversity of the junkyard. […] the viewer has the space and time to develop their own relationship to the place, the people, and the film itself.’

— Excerpted from Patricia Alvarez Astacio, 'An Interview with Véréna Paravel and J. P. Sniadecki', 17 December 2012.