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Culture
May 30, 2012, 11:48 am

Movie Magic! Mary Help of Christians Relocates to the Bronx

By DANIEL MAURER
Movie Shoot at Mary Help of Christians Church in East VillageDaniel Maurer Henry Barrial (right) supervises camera set-up.

A little over a month after “Girl on the Train” transformed the former Mary Help of Christians school into an after-hours club, a film crew is shooting inside the church itself today. Henry Barrial, the director of “Some Body” and “Pig,” described his latest film, “The House That Jack Built,” as an “ultra low-budget” production about a young man who buys a tenement in the Bronx using money saved up from dealing drugs out of his bodega.

So how does Mary Help of Christians come into all this? Well, it’ll stand in as a church in the Bronx where a baptism takes place in the beginning of the movie and a wedding takes place at the end. Other scenes are being shot in Jackson Heights and the Boogie Down.

Mr. Barrial found the church through Caryl Pierre, a production coordinator on the “Girl on the Train” shoot who also recommended the church for this one. The director, who is Cuban-American, said the movie will star Puerto Rican up-and-comer E.J. Bonilla as well as Saundra Santiago, best known for playing Det. Gina Calabrese on “Miami Vice.” The screenplay was written by Joseph Vásquez, the Bronx-born filmmaker who wrote “Hangin’ with the Homeboys,” starring John Leguizamo, before he died of AIDS-related complications in 1995.

Education
April 12, 2012, 12:50 pm

Inside the Abandoned Mary Help of Christians School

By DANIEL MAURER


Photos: Daniel Maurer

The Local got a look inside the eerily abandoned Mary Help of Christians school when we visited the set of “Girl on the Train” last night. The school was closed in 2006 – a victim of Archdiocese of New York’s citywide restructuring – and its building is currently on the market along with the connected church, which closed in 2007 (though it still hosts Sunday masses).

Some of the old gymnasium’s floorboards have been uprooted and the paint is peeling off the walls, but remnants of the building’s former incarnation remain: a discarded pencil sharpener here, a school desk there, a handwritten sign on a closed door reading “Teacher’s Only!” Most haunting are the messages that linger on chalkboards: “Te amo Jesus, por favor habre nuestra iglesia” reads one (“I love you Jesus, please open our church”).

Have a glimpse inside, via our slideshow. (There’s just something about abandoned school buildings.) You’ll see some graffiti and equipment from the film shoot, but you’ll also see gloriously untouched murals, starting with one by Chico. It reads: “Mary Help of Christians Welcomes You.”