gentrification
Yorktown: You Are Here
Posted July 18th, 2008 by TeishanYorktown Community Organization with Scribe Video Center
This video is available for purchase as part of the Precious Places Community History Project Vol. 3 compilation DVD.
Created in the early 1960s as an experiment in affordable home ownership for low and middle income families, Yorktown is one of North Philadelphia’s great success stories. Built on land that the Philadelphia Inquirer once dismissed as a gang and drug-ridden "slum,” Yorktown’s transformation was initiated by Bright Hope Baptist Church and 650 neighbors who banded together to address the housing needs of their community. They partnered with a development organization and formed a 98% black-owned housing cluster on 150 acres of prime land in North Central Philadelphia.
Pride of the Hill
Posted December 11th, 2007 by InternCramer Hill Residents Association with Scribe Video Center
Production Facilitator - Graham Hancock, Humanities Consultant - Ricardo Howell, Post Production - Graham Hancock
This video is available for purchase as part of a Precious Places Community History Project Vol.2 compilation DVD.
In 2004, much of the stable, working class community of Cramer Hill in Camden, New Jersey was slated to be bulldozed. The City Planning Board had authorized $1 billion redevelopment plan that would have demolished 1,200 homes under eminent domain law. Although parts of the Cramer Hill waterfront had fallen into disrepair, residents say that their charming neighborhood on the Delaware River had a vitality that the City failed to recognize. An isolated neighborhood adjacent to a marina, Cramer Hill's forested shores are a unique natural sanctuary.
I Come From A Place
Posted December 11th, 2007 by InternAsian Arts Initiative with Scribe Video Center
Production & Post Production Facilitator - Gary San Angel; Humanities Consultant - Gary McDonogh & Cindy Wong
This video is available for purchase as part of a Precious Places Community History Project Vol.1 compilation DVD.
I Come From A Place by Asian Arts Initiative (Center City)
Asian Arts Initiative, a community arts center in Center City Philadelphia, is a unique and vital meeting place where artists and everyday people gather to think critically and creatively about the experiences of Asian Americans. In the coming months, the organization will have to relocate to make way for the expansion of the Convention Center. Through Precious Places, the group aims to record not only their memories but also their opposition to being displaced.
The Taking of South Central…Philadelphia
Posted December 11th, 2007 by InternOdunde with Scribe Video Center
Videomaking Consultant - Tina Morton; Humanities Consultant - Jeff Maskovsky, Post Production - Tina Morton
This video is available for purchase as part of a Precious Places Community History Project Vol.1 compilation DVD.
Once “South Philly,” the area along South Street is now “Center City.” As longtime residents around the 2100 block can attest, gentrification has besieged this close-knit neighborhood that is regionally famous for Odunde, an annual African street festival. South Street is located just blocks from Center City's skyscrapers, and with real estate values rising, longtime residents in this neighborhood increasingly face displacement as the borders of Center City march ever southward.
The Taking of Bodine: Never Forget
Posted December 6th, 2007 by InternCommunity Leadership Institute with Scribe Video Center
Videomaking Consultant - Anula Shetty, Humanities Consultant - Debora Kodish, Post Prodution - Gail Lloyd
This video is available for purchase as part of a Precious Places Community History Project Vol.1 compilation DVD.
The Taking of Bodine is a harrowing glimpse into one of the darker episodes of Philadelphia's urban revitalization saga. In 2002 and 2003, residents of the multi-ethnic Norris Square/West Kensington neighborhood received notices that their homes would be repossessed by the city under the Neighborhood Transformation Initiative. Blight criteria included "economically or socially undesirable land use," allowing developers to make requests to the city repossess land belonging to long-time residents.
Precious Places Community History Project Vol. 3
Posted September 28th, 2007 by Gretjen
Scribe Video Center and various community organizations
$20 for individuals/ $50 for institutions and universities
Individuals may purchase this DVD for $20 plus shipping and handling online using Scribe Video Center's secure PayPal account. Institutions should contact Scribe directly by calling 215 222 4201.
Scribe Video Center’s
Precious Places Community History Project Vol. 3
"It [Precious Places] moves documentary practice away from the individualistic and idiosyncratic, typified in projects like Supersize Me (2004, by Morgan Spurlock) and Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004, by Michael Moore), towards collaborative interactions between neighborhoods, filmmakers, and scholars who create new histories. As a result, the project constitutes more than an intervention into the conceptualization of documentary. Importing concepts from postcolonial studies, the project shows how to embody difficult and sprawling polyvcalities and microhistories as a way to reclaim and revitalize ideas about the archive, history and memory.
Rather than creating a single authorial vision, Precious Places advances the collaborative ethnographic and historical model, where community participants become the authors and not simply the objects of community history." -- an excerpt from Patricia Zimmerman's article "Imbedded Public Histories" published in Afterimage, March/April 2006
April 8, 2004 - Philadelphia City Paper, Day in the Life
May 6, 2004 - Northeast Times, Getting Neighborhoods in Focus
2005 Athens International Film and Video Festival (tied for first place in the documentary category, winning for Best Expression of a Community on Film), Athens, OH
2005 & 2007 Philadelphia Film Festival, Philadelphia, PA
2006 Harlem Film Festival, Harlem, NY
2006-2007 Council on Foundations’ 39th Annual Film & Video Festival
Precious Places Community History Project Vol. 2
Posted September 28th, 2007 by GretjenScribe Video Center and various community organizations
$20 for individuals/ $50 for institutions and universities
Individuals may purchase this DVD online for $20 plus shipping and handling using Scribe Video Center's secure PayPal account. Institutions should contact Scribe directly by calling 215 222 4201.
Scribe Video Center’s
Precious Places Community History Project Vol. 2
"It [Precious Places] moves documentary practice away from the individualistic and idiosyncratic, typified in projects like Supersize Me (2004, by Morgan Spurlock) and Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004, by Michael Moore), towards collaborative interactions between neighborhoods, filmmakers, and scholars who create new histories. As a result, the project constitutes more than an intervention into the conceptualization of documentary. Importing concepts from postcolonial studies, the project shows how to embody difficult and sprawling polyvcalities and microhistories as a way to reclaim and revitalize ideas about the archive, history and memory.
Rather than creating a single authorial vision, Precious Places advances the collaborative ethnographic and historical model, where community participants become the authors and not simply the objects of community history." -- an excerpt from Patricia Zimmerman's article "Imbedded Public Histories" published in Afterimage, March/April 2006
April 8, 2004 - Philadelphia City Paper, Day in the Life
May 6, 2004 - Northeast Times, Getting Neighborhoods in Focus
2005 Athens International Film and Video Festival (tied for first place in the documentary category, winning for Best Expression of a Community on Film), Athens, OH
2005 & 2007 Philadelphia Film Festival, Philadelphia, PA
2006 Harlem Film Festival, Harlem, NY
2006-2007 Council on Foundations’ 39th Annual Film & Video Festival
Precious Places Community History Project Vol. 1
Posted September 27th, 2007 by Gretjen
Scribe Video Center and various community organizations
$20 for individuals/ $50 for institutions and universities
Individuals may purchase this DVD for $20 plus shipping and handling online using Scribe Video Center's secure PayPal account. Institutions should contact Scribe directly by calling 215 222 4201.
Scribe Video Center’s
Precious Places Community History Project Vol. 1
"Precious Places moves documentary practice away from the individualistic and idiosyncratic, typified in projects like Supersize Me (2004, by Morgan Spurlock) and Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004, by Michael Moore), towards collaborative interactions between neighborhoods, filmmakers, and scholars who create new histories. As a result, the project constitutes more than an intervention into the conceptualization of documentary. Importing concepts from postcolonial studies, the project shows how to embody difficult and sprawling polyvcalities and microhistories as a way to reclaim and revitalize ideas about the archive, history and memory. Rather than creating a single authorial vision, Precious Places advances the collaborative ethnographic and historical model, where community participants become the authors and not simply the objects of community history."
-- an excerpt from Patricia Zimmerman's article "Imbedded Public Histories" published in Afterimage, March/April 2006
Philadelphia Film Festival, 2005, 2007
Athens Film Festival
Harlem Film Festival
WHYY TV 12, Philadelphia
Belmont Community History Project
Posted July 18th, 2007 by GretjenLouis Massiah and Scribe Video Center for the Philadelphia Planning Commission's Community Heritage Preservation Project
William "Sonny" Martin, Bertha S. Waters and other longtime residents of West Philadelphia's Belmont neighborhood reflect on the area's prosperous past in the first half of the century, its slow economic decline, and the efforts of the Belmont Improvement Association, the Calvary Church and other concerned organizations and individual residents to revitalize the area, with or without sustained governmental assistance.
Louis Massiah is the founder and executive director of the Scribe Video Center in Philadelphia, a media arts organization that provides low-cost workshops and equipment access to emerging video and filmmakers and community organizations. He is an independent filmmaker who has produced and directed a variety of award-winning documentary films for public television.
Known for his explorations of civil rights themes and crises in the African-American community, his credits include two films in the Eyes on the Prize II series and The Bombing of Osage Avenue, about the burning of a black section of Philadephia as a result of the police bombing of the headquarters of the group MOVE. He is also the director of W.E.B. DuBois: A Biography in Four Voices. Massiah has received awards from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the the National Black Programming Consortium, the Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters, the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame and several Emmy award nominations. In 1996, he was a recipient of a five year John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation fellowship. His current project, Haytian Stories, examines the complex relationship between the United States and Haiti over the last 200 years.
July 28, 2004 - "Movie-ing on Up: A Scribe Video Center summer film series goes into the neighborhoods," Philadelphia Weekly
7/31/04 - Street Movies screening at Holly Street Garden, Osage Avenue and Budd Street
(Philadelphia, PA)
