Editor’s Note:

Between 1993 and 1997, Lincoln Road in Miami Beach wasn’t the developer-laced promenade it is today—it was a corridor of wild artistic experimentation. At its spiritual center stood The Alliance for Media Arts and its sister project, The Alliance Cinema—a pocket-sized theater with a cosmic heart, screening radical films on 16mm and Super 8.

During those years, Cinema Vortex emerged—co-conceived by filmmaker and agit-prop artist Mark Boswell—with programming that featured work by Rey Parlá and Michael Betancourt. These screenings birthed The Anti-Film Festival and helped shape the underground media culture of South Florida. This interview, originally between Rey and Michael, has been reframed within that incandescent history.

Scratch, Signal, and Story: Cinema Vortex Redux

A Dialogue with Rey Parlá and Michael Betancourt on the Ghosts of Lincoln Road, Miami Beach, FL. 1990s Avant-Garde Spirit

Interview conducted by Michael Betancourt

Michael Betancourt: Rey, let’s begin at the beginning: when you think back to those early Cinema Vortex years—Super 8s unspooling at the Colony Theater or The Alliance Cinema—what do you remember most vividly?

Rey Parlá: It was raw. Intimate. Spiritual in a way that was totally unscripted. The theater lights would dim, and you’d feel like you were entering a psychic back alley—images scratched, burned, repurposed. For me, Super 8 was never nostalgic—it was weaponized memory. That era on Lincoln Road was about creating a new grammar, a visual poetics that could speak in signal, not syntax.

MB: There was a deep sense of political urgency in many of the screenings. Do you think the aesthetic was deliberately agit-prop?

RP: Absolutely. We didn’t have money, but we had urgency. We weren’t trying to imitate Hollywood—our heroes were Dziga Vertov, Santiago Álvarez, Bruce Conner. You, me, Boswell—we weren’t just making films, we were making interruptions. The Anti-Film Festival wasn’t an ironic name. It was a statement against passivity.

MB: And yet, your films were deeply personal too—especially Rumba Abstracta and Sporadic Germination. They were poetic, nearly mystical.

RP: Poetry is rebellion. I didn’t want to lecture people—I wanted to hypnotize them, then slip the message in through rhythm and color. I think Rumba Abstracta was my way of reclaiming space—culturally, aesthetically, and spiritually. And back then, Miami was still malleable. We were working out of suitcases, abandoned spaces, and black-box theaters. It was magic.

MB: Let’s talk about collaboration. One of the defining aspects of that time was cross-pollination. You worked with Natasha Tsakos, Vanessa Gocksch, José Parlá, and MERCE. What did that freedom mean to you?

RP: It meant everything. The hierarchy was flat—we weren’t waiting for institutions to give us permission. Probe, which I created with Natasha Tsakos, was part theater, part live cinema, part myth. Vanessa and I shot Empujando un Botón between Mexico and Miami—two kids inventing a grammar for what we didn’t see on screen. Collaboration was how we survived and thrived. We built an ecosystem from scratch.

MB: The term "Scratch-Graphs"—how did that originate?

RP: It came out of frustration and necessity. I was hand-scratching Super 8 reels, painting directly onto the celluloid, scanning frames, layering prints, filming again—it became this recursive gesture, a loop. Eventually, I started calling them Scratch-Graphs: scratched photographs that documented memory through damage, through erosion. The scratches were language. The silence between cuts? That was grammar.

MB: Do you see the work you’re doing now as a continuation of that?

RP: I do. Even though I’ve expanded into theater, directing, studio management, publishing—it’s all still rooted in the impulse of that Miami moment. I’m still chasing rhythm, still looking for ghost signals in the static. The early ‘90s taught me to make art with what I have, to see the scratch as divine. I carry that with me.

MB: The developers eventually came. Lincoln Road got manicured. The Alliance closed. The Colony became a venue again, but the spirit changed. Does that loss haunt the work?

RP: It haunts me, but not with sadness—more with a sense of duty. We have to keep the archive alive—not just in memory, but in movement. The people, the screenings, the ghosts of Cinema Vortex—they live inside what we do now. The scratch never leaves.

Postscript:

This conversation is part of an ongoing effort to reframe and preserve the untold cultural history of Miami Beach’s underground media scene. What happened at The Alliance Cinema, Cinema Vortex, and The Anti-Film Festival wasn’t just regional—it was revolutionary. And like a scratch in the emulsion, it left a mark that still flickers.

© Rey Parlá & Michael Betancourt 2024 - All Rights Reserved.