Last fall, junior Talent Development scholar and Harrington School student Cristóbal Bustos released his first documentary, “The BSLG- A Voice Was Heard!”. The documentary explores the 1992 Taft Hall Takeover led by the Black Student Leadership Group (BSLG) and its effects 30 years later.
“I just wanted the story to be told, you know, because a lot of people just walk past that quote, and they don’t really think anything of it, just like me,” Bustos said. “There’s so much history behind that. It just had to be told, and I felt like I was the right person to do it with my filmmaking skills.”
Bustos’s passion for creating video content started when his dad bought him a camera as a sophomore in high school. “I come from a disadvantaged background, and I begged him for this camera for a while,” he said, ” but I didn’t know what I was going to do with the camera.”
Before working on documentaries, Bustos filmed reels for athletes and created video content for the Basketball Club Rhode Island (BCRI). Coming into his first year at URI, he decided he wanted to shift from filming sports to doing narrative filmmaking.
His passion for documentary was sparked while taking FLM 220: Intermediate Film Production, which focuses on personal filmmaking. For the class, Bustos created a documentary about emigration, which honored the story of his dad, who emigrated to the U.S. from Colombia. Shortly before Bustos came to URI, his father passed away.
“He was my inspiration,” Bustos said. “Once he saw that what I was doing was something great, that’s how I knew I had to stick with it. He supported me a lot. I started off editing on my phone, so he bought me a MacBook. I had to pay him back, you know. That kind of taught me to hustle. He made a lot of sacrifices too. He would take me to basketball games because I couldn’t drive yet, and he would stay in the parking lot the whole game and wait for me. I don’t want that to go unnoticed.”
During his sophomore year, the opportunity to make his first documentary, “The BSLG- A Voice Was Heard!” presented itself. “I made some connections while I was filming basketball,” Bustos said. “[Lanre Ajakaiye] reached out to me. I met him because his son plays basketball for BCRI. He found out that I was doing TD and thought I was the perfect candidate for this documentary they had in mind.”
The idea for the documentary was sparked when Ajakaiye ’95, communication studies and English, saw footage from the Takeover that Earl Smith, the late assistant dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Both were members of the BSLG during the events of 1992. Malcolm Anderson ’94, psychology, the former president of Uhuru Sasa and spokesman for the BSLG during the takeover, joined the project soon after. Anderson brought news clippings and other information he had kept. With all of the pieces together, Bustos was brought to the team and began the process of interviewing, filming, and editing.
While Bustos has been recognized for his role in creating the documentary, he said that there were a lot more people who worked on the project than himself, including Ajakaiye, Anderson, John Peterson, Chuck Watson, and many others.
The documentary has received critical acclaim since it was released. This July, he was featured on Rhode Island PBS’s “Generation Rising” alongside Anderson and Ajakaiye. For Bustos, being on the show was an important chance to spread the story of the Taft Hall Takeover further.
After completing this project, Bustos already has two more documentaries in production. Once he graduates from URI, he hopes to continue pursuing his passion for documentary filmmaking.
“I love documentary work,” Bustos said. “I think it’s my I found my niche. I definitely see myself getting industry experience and then shifting over to just doing documentaries on my own, which is something that I would love to do. Building this portfolio and [being at URI] is setting me up for success in the future.”