Text: Julie Schwietert Collazo
Photos: Francisco Collazo
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Actress America Ferrera

Before Mariel was born, Francisco and I watched a documentary or film every night; sometimes, we’d watch two or three.

Now, with a very active 10 month old, most of our movie watching is limited to film festivals. We make elaborate schedules of the movies we want to see and then trade off childcare for a week.

That’s what we’re doing this week, as HBO’s New York International Latino Film Festival kicked off yesterday in Manhattan with the showing of “The Dry Land,” a film about a soldier returning from the war in Iraq. Francisco was among the photographers at the pre-screening red carpet event, and has posted some of the shots here.

More than 100 documentaries, shorts, and features will be shown between now and August 1. We’re particularly excited to see:

“Boys of Summer”: A documentary about Curacao’s Little League Baseball team.

“Whitewash”: A documentary about black surfers.

“Mamachas del Ring”: A documentary about female wrestlers in Bolivia.

and a handful of films from/about Colombia, including “My Kidnapper,” “Sins of My Father,” and “The Two Escobars.”

If you’re in New York City and are interested in attending any of the screenings, you can check the full schedule here. You can also follow the event on Twitter.

Text: Julie Schwietert Collazo
Photo: Francisco Collazo
**

The Matador team launched its online travel photography course last week and already students are enrolling and working on their first assignment, one component of which is to introduce themselves and talk about why they’re interested in photography.

One student mentioned that he’s interested in the stories that photos can tell, especially stories about the environment, about marginalized people, and overlooked corners of our world.

I agree that photos can convey urgency, feeling, and acuity that words may lack.

Sometimes, though, photos only start to hint at a story, and without any context at all, you’re only left with questions that rattle around in your brain, unanswered.

Francisco shot this photo in the subway station at Union Square yesterday. I didn’t ask him anything at all about it, but I had a hundred questions. Who is she? Where is she from? What does she think as she pulls on her black mariachi pants, the ones with the silver adornments sewn down the side? How did her group come together? How much money do they make? How does she feel when people stop to take in the whole scene? Or when they walk by, pretending not to notice or trying to block out the sound? What is she feeling at this exact moment?

You can see more photos of the mariachi–and of other interesting New Yorkers– in our New York People set on Flickr.

Text: Julie Schwietert Collazo
Photos: Francisco Collazo
**

The Statue of Liberty is definitely NOT an overlooked place in New York, and it makes an appearance in my MatadorTrips article, “What NOT to Do in New York City.” You’ll have to click over to find out why (and what I recommend instead).

And if you take my advice to skip the Statue, you can get a much better view of Liberty here:

Text: Julie Schwietert Collazo
Photos: Francisco Collazo
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Dandies and duds, Gatsbys and gaudies… all out in equal measure during New York City’s annual Easter Day Parade:

Text: Julie Schwietert Collazo
Photo: Francisco Collazo
**

Municipal buildings are like cemeteries, I think: We tend to avoid them unless we have some inescapable business there.

I don’t know why this is, though; as with cemeteries, the buildings where formal business is conducted tend to harbor ambitious elements of art and design that are rarely in evidence–at least not in quite the same way–in our more quotidian spaces.

Last night, we attended a talk sponsored by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council as part of its “Access Restricted” series of “nomadic lectures” about the law. The setting was the New York County Supreme Court, a grand, landmarked building whose entryway leads into a rotunda painted with a mural depicting seminal figures and moments in legal history.

Rotundas… you’ve probably never seen a travel article about them, but this is at least the second one I’ve seen (the first being the rotunda of the Capitol building in San Juan, Puerto Rico, a gorgeous mosaic also depicting an epic sweep of history) that has caught my attention and held it, almost distracting me from whatever I was supposed to be doing. There’s so much happening in this mural; I could look at this tiny detail of the scene unfolding beneath Lincoln’s leg for at least a day:

There’s no drum roll and take-away here. Just this: don’t overlook the obvious in your search to find something extraordinary.

More photos of the Court are here.