Teen Filmmakers Capture Spirit of Storm-Ravaged Long Beach

This story was updated on 5.28.13.

For teen filmmakers Brenda Cespedes and Erick Urquilla, the person who shined in "The Spirt of Long Beach," their documentary on the South Shore city slammed by Hurricane Sandy, was a 10-year-old named Winona. 

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“You could hear the innocence in her voice and you could really feel what she was feeling during the storm,” said Brenda of the girl who gave them a tour of her gutted West End home.

Erick has a brother around Winona’s age and he imagined how his sibling might react in her situation. “It really hit me,” said the Uniondale resident.

Both students are enrolled at Nassau BOCES Long Island High School for the Arts (LIHSA) and were the primary filmmakers of the 34-minute documentary that, according to its billing, captures stories of residents in the storm-ravaged community, notably their resilience and efforts to help each other recover.

A senior at LIHSA, Brenda lives on Park Avenue in Long Beach but she said her home wasn’t badly damaged by Sandy. “But I did experience the storm firsthand,” she added.

If she hadn’t attended LIHSA, Brenda said, she probably wouldn’t have made The Spirit of Long Beach. During this school year, Erick met Brenda and his interest in taking part in the documentary grew out of their friendship.

“She lives in Long Beach and it affected us also, because she’s a dear friend of ours and we were really concerned about her and her well being,” said Erick, also an LIHSA senior. “And we really just wanted to let her story, which is parallel to other people in her community, let it be known.”

About a month after the storm, their teacher, Anthony Petrucci, thought post-Sandy Long Beach would be a good subject for a documentary. At least once a month thereafter, they all hit the beach and tried to pack in as many interviews with city residents as possible.

“We felt that it was just one of those opportunities that was staring us in the face and was important and needed to be done,” Petrucci said.

While the film crew chose some people to interview at random, as they took footage of the storm-battered beach town, other interviews came through their friendships and people connected to the school. And while all five families featured in the film are West End residents, the crew tried to use their stories as a reflection of the wider community.  

“We essentially asked them what their experience was like going through the storm and what the aftermath had brought them in the way of their resilience, their recovery, their sense of hope, and their sense of spirit,” Petrucci said. “And therein came our title, Spirit of Long Beach, in reference to the people who make up the community.”

In their footage the filmmakers found that they could create an age spectrum, from a 10-year-old girl to a 66-year-old lifelong city resident. In two separate interviews, a father is featured, one with his son; the other with his daughter, who graciously told their experiences.

“The insurance process was one of the big components of this piece,” Petrucci said. “We heard a lot of nightmare stories.”

Since the interviews were conducted during different stages of Sandy’s aftermath, the filmmakers wanted to add a timeline component to the film. The background debris during earlier footage, denoting the days immediately after the Oct. 29 storm, give way to interviews that show makeshift dunes that were propped along the beach weeks later.

“The visuals tell the timeline of the piece,” Petrucci said.

The film premiered April 16 at LIHSA in Syosset, and a second screening was held April 27. Although the screenings were free and open to the public, contributions were taken that will benefit Long Island Cares Emergency Relief and Recovery Program.

Brenda, who previously worked on some independent films, said hours before the premier that she was eager to see people’s reactions to the film. “That’s what I’m mostly excited about,” she said.

Erick, who aspires to win an Oscar before he turns 30, was excited that people would get to see a great story that deserved to be told. What message does he hope people take from watching the film? “That there’s always hope,” he said.

Petrucci said LIHSA award-winning film program teaches students the fundamentals of pre-production, production and post-production, and that Brenda and Erick were born with a determination and drive to create meaningful works of art. At the conclusion of the premier, Petrucci noticed something different about the intensity and duration of the applause, which swelled into a standing ovation.

“My students and I carried out this documentary with the utmost reverence for the struggle and survival of the Sandy victims in Long Beach,” he said, “and we were deeply gratified to see how they responded to our piece.”

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