“Back in the day there was all these people, there were hundreds of people here for music that was made by teenagers and children basically,” explains filmmaker Samuel Peralta, who’s making a documentary with Anthony Clemente about the hardcore scene of their home borough, from 1982 to 2000.
Why 2000? To quote the dudes from their Staten Island Hardcore: A History IndieGoGo campaign video (above) that aren’t in their thirties, “2013 for Staten Island is completely bullshit. There’s nothing. There’s literally nothingness.”
The film is being made by and for the people who were active in the scene’s origins and seem to lament it. Aside from archival footage and music history, there’s a theme of a borough identity crisis: “Are we even part of the New York hardcore?”
“We are the forgotten borough. We will always be a forgotten borough.”
