Roberto Lugo: Without Wax (2019)

Roberto Lugo grew up in a Puerto Rican family in the hood in Kensington, Philadelphia, at the height of the crack epidemic in the late '80s and early '90s. He beat all of the odds to become a renowned ceramicist whose pottery, emblazoned with images of minority activists from MLK to RBG, now sells for tens of thousands of dollars to museums and collectors all over the world. But what's the point of making priceless pots when the hood is still starving? Roberto struggles constantly to balance his place in the community he came from with his place in the world that buys his art. In this boundary-pushing cinematic documentary, Roberto returns to his old neighborhood to pay his inspiration forward and make art that does justice to the stories of his community and others like it. "Without Wax" was created in close collaboration with Roberto and shot entirely on-location in Philadelphia. Roberto - artist, activist, and educator - plays himself in the film, the events and other characters of which are a distillation of his reality.