Flushing filmmaker Adrian Manzano knows a thing or two about love and heartbreak, or at least his latest film, “Sex, Love and Salsa,” would have you believe so.
Manzano premiered his film in September 2014 in New York City, and it has also been screened in Montreal, Switzerland and Germany.
The piece is semi-autobiographical, and Manzano served as both its director and its lead actor as Julian Suarez, a womanizer juggling relationships with three different women. He falls in love with an emotionally unavailable salsa dancer as he attends underground dance parties, ultimately suffering a karmic heartbreak following a spree of inflicting emotional damage on others.
“I wrote from a personal place describing characters and situations that happened to me,” Manzano said. “I also wanted to show the city as a character, each girl representing a different borough and time in a woman’s life.”
Along with Manzano’s ability to poke fun at and examine the consequences of male bravado, Queens is prominently showcased in the feature, both as the setting of the story and the birthplace of its main characters.
Iconic locations such as Long Island City and Flushing Meadow Corona Park are recognizable as scenic backdrops to the drama. The fictionalized Julian Suarez resides in his family’s home in Queens and so does his most persistent conquest, Genny, a young girl not yet wise to the ways of manipulative men.
Manzano says that growing up in the “World’s Borough” was a huge influence on his early life. His parent met at a Corona wedding in the 1970s, and he was raised in multicultural environment having lived in Flushing and attended school in Jamaica.
“I can say that Queens made me,” Manzano said. “It exposed me to a wide variety of cultures and people all living together in cramped apartment buildings.”
Manzano is currently on an extended trip showing the “Sex, Love and Salsa” in cinema clubs in Colombia—the country of his family’s origin—and working on his next piece, “La Graduada,” or “The Graduate.”
His next movie also has autobiographical elements and focuses on the experience of a second-generation Latina moving back home after college. Manzano will not be playing the lead in the absurd dark comedy, which deals with the clash of an individualist American culture against the expectations of an immigrant family with conservative values.
