Independent Film, “Coalition,” Screens at
Kumble Theater for the Performing Arts, September 29
- Featured actors from Sopranos, Oz, Wu Tang Clan, scheduled to attend -

Brooklyn, N.Y. —A hard-hitting, gritty film about New York City’s construction industry, “Coalition,” will have its premiere screening at the Kumble Theater for the Performing Arts at Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus. The film’s featured actors include Frank Vincent from the “Sopranos,” Michael Wright and Chuck Zito from the TV series, “Oz,” Raekwon of the Wu Tang Clan, and Stephanie “Trinity” Finochio  from World Wrestling Entertainment, who are expected at the screening.

The screening will take place on Friday, September 29, at 7 p.m. The Kumble Theater is located on the Brooklyn Campus at the corner of Flatbush and DeKalb avenues in downtown Brooklyn. Tickets are $10.

The film’s writer/director and producer is Joseph Ariola, a long-time member of the Operating Engineers Union in the city, who co-wrote the screenplay with retired New York City Detective Robert Cea. The film depicts New York’s lucrative construction business as systematically shaken down by non-union labor. Ariola explains that his film is based on the true inner workings of the police trying to infiltrate the city’s largest and most dangerous group, the SBM (Survival of the Black Man) Coalition, with mob middle men setting up coalition deals, unions trying to organize against the use of cheap unskilled non-union labor, and one man in the middle trying to battle the mob and coalition bosses and to find his true mission in life.

“It’s a modern-day ‘On the Waterfront,’” says Ariola, “a true-to-life voyeuristic view of how both sides of the law are pitted against each other.”

The screening is part of Independent Film New York, created by Attika J. Torrence, an LIU alumnus who acts in “Coalition” and plans a series of similar film presentations by independent filmmakers at the Kumble Theater.

For more information, call (718) 488-1624 or visit www.kumbletheater.org.

Long Island University opened its Brooklyn Campus in 1926, welcoming a diverse population at a time when other major universities enforced quota systems against racial and ethnic minorities. Some 28,000 students currently are enrolled at the university’s residential and regional campuses, including more than 11,000 at the Brooklyn Campus, which is accessible to all major bus and subway routes and the Long Island Rail Road.

 

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