By Zoe Thomas
Brooklyn Daily Eagle

BROOKLYN — Tired of rising movie prices and looking for a more true-to-life depiction of Brooklyn, one shot on real streets and not in Hollywood studios? Well you may have to look no further than your TV for the answer.

Partners, the first feature length film from Brooklyn filmmaker Peter Iengo, will be featured on Time Warner Cable’s On Demand channel for free throughout July. The film follows the lives of two cops and their extraordinary attempts to stop an organized crime boss and deal with issues in their personal lives in their fight to return order back to Brooklyn streets. It received top honors at the Staten Island Film Festival in June, winning the award for Best Dramatic Feature Film for a Crime Drama.

Iengo believes that the distribution on Time Warner will take his film to the next level. “It takes the movie from student independent level to a wider audience,� he said.

About 80 percent of the film, which wrapped in March, was shot on Brooklyn streets, including the opening scene, which was filmed on Clinton and DeGraw streets in Carroll Gardens and features some of the area’s beautiful brownstones. Parts of Mill Basin, Bergen Beach, and Marine Park are also featured in the movie.

Iengo’s inspiration for Partners came from his family’s connection to law enforcement and his grandfather’s stories about old Brooklyn mafia families. Iengo was born and raised in Mill Basin and got his start in film while at Edward R. Murrow High School, in Midwood. He has since gone on to Five Towns College in Long Island, where he will be entering his senior year this fall, studying film.

Partners is not his first award winning piece. Iengo won awards for best director of a short film and best short film for Blood Oath at the 2007 New York International Film and Video Festival. He hopes that the success of his latest piece will help him to create a sequel to Partners, which has been sent out for consideration in other film festivals around the country.

If a sequel is made, Iengo and his team will again be relying on help from the mayor’s program, Made in NY, which supports projects that shoot at least 75 percent of their footage within the five boroughs. “It’s a necessity,� said Iengo, adding, “It helps New York filmmakers shoot in New York.�

He will also be trying to secure a bigger budget for this project. Last time Iengo and his crew had a budget of only $50,000, most of which came from student grants and loans. If he moves forward with a sequel he said he would like to hire one well known actor and a professional sound and lighting crew, but he still plans to use the same local cast and to shoot on local streets.

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