May Day Takeover
Price:
Higher Education Institutions & Government Agency DVD | $49.95
K-12 & Public Libraries DVD | $49.95
Home Video DVD License – Restrictions Apply | $20.00
Film Summary:
Hey, does anybody recognize that van parked outside? No? On May 1, 1990, members of Dignity Housing, an organization of homeless and formerly homeless people working for permanent housing solutions to the shelter crisis, swarmed out of a van in an upper-middle-class neighborhood and put words into action. Much to the surprise of the neighbors, the members of Dignity staged a relatively polite and highly organized squat of a vacant, federally owned building in a community far from their own to emphasize the federal government's failure to address the housing needs of the poor.
Dignity Housing is a non-profit organization that has been providing affordable housing and social service supports to homeless families throughout Philadelphia since 1988.
Filmmaker Bio:
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 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.
Public Screenings, Broadcasts and Festivals:
May 14, 1994 | 1994 Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema's 9th Annual Festival of Independents (Philadelphia, PA)
January 14 & February 11, 1997 | Part of Tuesday Night Specials broadcast on DUTV Cable 54 (Philadelphia, PA)