By William Kenny
Times Staff Writer
If uttered on rare occasions by an isolated few, the statements might easily be dismissed as the rantings of angry old people. But in reality, you can’t go hardly a day in many parts of Northeast Philadelphia without someone telling you, “The neighborhood is changing.”
Therefore, at least in the eye of public opinion, it must be true.
Using that axiom as a springboard, a Center City-based non-profit media training center is seeking to document change, past and present, in neighborhoods throughout the city.
Last Saturday, more than 20 film crews composed of one or two media professionals, along with community organizations, blanketed neighborhoods in every part of Philadelphia while interviewing longtime residents and capturing sights and sounds for posterity as part of the Precious Places project.
Locally, the participating organizations are the Frankford Group Ministy/Beacon Center, the Oxford Circle Mennonite Church and the Tacony Civic Association. Organizers of the project hope to complete editing eight-minute segments on each neighborhood late this year.
“In a lot of ways, the fear of change in some neighborhoods and the embracing of change in others has been the catalyst to do this,” said Louis Massiah, executive director of the Scribe Video Center, organizer of the project.
Many factors contribute to the changing nature of these small communities within the larger Philadelphia community.
Traditionally in many parts of the city, families have remained in a particular neighborhood through several generations, Massiah said. But now, those population patterns are changing.
“A change in real-estate values in some neighborhoods has made them attractive to (new) people,” Massiah said, adding that higher taxes have forced many older residents on fixed incomes to move out of their longtime homes.
Further, he explained, foreign immigration has changed the ethnic makeup of some areas. Some parts of the Northeast, for instance, have seen increases in Spanish-speaking and Asian-American populations in recent years.
The look of some neighborhoods is changing, too, with the booming housing market and recent efforts by city government to stamp out blight and develop in its place.
“All of these things create change,” Massiah said.
Whereas some changes are dramatic, others are subtle and indiscernible to outsiders. That’s why the folks at Scribe chose to let the community groups run the show, each with the help of experienced humanities consultants and filmmakers.
“When a neighborhood group documents something, it comes from their perspective,” Massiah said.
“That’s different than when a news station comes down and documents something. Generally, mass media doesn’t cover things unless there’s a problem.”
The Frankford project focused on the neighborhood’s rich history as a recruiting site for soldiers for the Civil War, as well as its large roles in the abolitionist movement and Underground Railroad.
The Oxford Circle folks sought to document the 50-year evolution of the church within the context of the demographically changing and diverse neighborhood.
In Tacony, the filmmakers wanted to feature the vast contributions of many active community groups that help preserve the past while planning for the future.
Though the groups had a bit more than two months to figure out a theme and lay out their filming plans, some didn’t get started quite on time. Still, said Huixia Lu, an independent producer from China and graduate media arts student at Temple University, the amateurs seemed to pick up on things.
Lu was the facilitator for the Oxford Circle group.
“They don’t know (film). All they know is home video and stuff,” she said. “(Training them) is the hardest part, but they are very quick to learn.”
Her group consisted mostly of women in their 30s and 40s, as well as the teenage daughter of one of them.
“I provide them with the technology, the basic technique,” Lu said. “Maybe they have the idea, but they don’t know how to express it in film.”
Their filming schedule included in-home interviews with several longtime local residents throughout the morning and early afternoon, as well as shots of a Salvation Army soup kitchen at lunchtime and several religious institutions late in the afternoon.
“The theme we gradually started to discover (during the planning) was we wanted to see how this church came to be,” Lu said. “The neighborhood is always changing. It’s different than before, and in the future I’m sure it will be different, too.”
Besides the Mennonite Church, the group chose to film the now-closed Temple Sholom synagogue, the St. Martin of Tours Roman Catholic Church and a Jewish cemetery, as well as ethnic shops along Summerdale Avenue and the U.S. Naval Inventory Control Point (commonly known as the Navy depot).
After editing an estimated five or six hours of footage for each of 21 crews into eight-minute segments, program organizers plan to premiere the mini-documentaries at the Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St., late this year or early next.
After that, they hope to show the films at venues in the subject neighborhoods, make them available in streaming video on the World Wide Web and submit copies to a public archive to aid future researchers.
“We are at the beginning of a new century and a new millennium,” Massiah said. “It’s the ideal time to document these neighborhoods.” ••
For more information about the Precious Places project, contact the Scribe Video Center at 215-735-3785 or www.scribe.org
Reporter William Kenny can be reached at 215-354-3031 or bkenny@phillynews.com