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Read the press release here.

Fulton Fish Market Film to Debut This Weekend

By Eddie Small | January 16, 2015 5:48pm
 "Bx46" will debut in New York on Jan. 17 at the Museum of the Moving Image at 2 p.m.
"Bx46" will debut in New York on Jan. 17 at the Museum of the Moving Image at 2 p.m.
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Les Plans du Pelican

HUNTS POINT — The Fulton Fish Market will get its own film this weekend when the movie "Bx46" makes its New York debut at the Museum of the Moving Image Saturday.

The documentary, named after the bus route that goes to the fish market, was created by directors Jeremie Brugidou and Fabien Clouette, who were born in France but came to the city in 2013 to tutor and take classes at Columbia University.

They heard about Fulton through a friend who was working at a fish market in France and decided to go check it out in February.

"We were here for a while," said Brugidou, "and we both wanted to see something else apart from the New York postcard imagery."

Although they expected to find a place with mob stories or a largely deserted neighborhood, what they found instead was an industrial area filled with busy laborers, something they found more interesting than the myths they had built up about the market.

Trailer Bx46 from Jeremie Brugidou on Vimeo.

"If you never go there, you have many, many ideas on the place, like Hunts Point, it’s a very iffy neighborhood. It’s a no man’s land and stuff like that," said Clouette. "And actually, it’s an industrial area. It’s a workers place. It’s not a no man’s land at all."

After Brugidou's and Clouette's first trip in February, they returned about 10 more times over the next six months to put together their film, which is meant to map out the fish market and demonstrate how the space works.

The filmmakers were also struck by the parallels they noticed between the fish market, the nearby waste transfer facility and the nearby Vernon C. Bain Center, a five-story jail barge.

"They're close together, and they actually embody similar processes, which are processes of transfer," Brugidou said.

However, the main focus of the film is on the Fulton Fish Market and the people who work there. Clouette said he was particularly excited for the market's employees to see "Bx46."

The film does not have a particularly linear structure or plot, said Brugidou. Rather, it represents an attempt to help people understand the Fulton Fish Market, its workers and its neighborhood.

"It’s more about exploring this space and the spaces around it," he said, "and just sort of giving a sense of how this space is lived, imagined and conceptualized by the people there and how they embody the space by their work and their habits and their speeches."

The movie will debut at the Museum of the Moving Image on Jan. 17 at 2 p.m.