'La Madrina: The Savage Life of Lorine Padilla': Film Review | DOC NYC 2020
In her 60-some years on Earth, Lorine Padilla has seen, done and endured enough to fill several lifetimes. A middle-school dropout who spent her formative years seeing ghosts in the funeral parlor across the street from her East Harlem home, Padilla grew up to be, by turns, the first lady of the Savage Skulls gang, the homeless single mother of a baby she could only afford to feed water and sugar for a harrowing three days, a Santeria advisor, a social worker and a community activist hoping that the decades she’s given to the Bronx won’t have been all in vain.