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Independent filmmaker Joseph B. Vasquez specialized in gritty, often graphically violent dramas dealing with street life in the Bronx. Vasquez's most critically acclaimed film, Hangin' With the Homeboys (1991), won him a special script award at the Sundance Film Festival. Just before Vasquez died of complications from AIDS, he completed Manhattan Merengue, a complete turnaround from his other films in that this was a romantic musical about an illegal Puerto Rican immigrant trying to make it as a dancer in New York.