| New Jersey State Museum Auditorium 205 West State Street • Trenton, NJ 08608 |
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| Wednesday, April 29 The Garden Wednesday, May 6 Home Tuesday, May 12 Farmingville |
Thursday, April 30 The Neo African Americans Thursday, May 7 Flag Wars Wednesday, May 13 Sidewalk |
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| All movies start at 6:00 p.m. Free and open to the public. | ||
The Garden (2007)
The fourteen-acre community garden at 41st and Alameda in South Central Los Angeles is the largest of its kind in the United States. Started as a form of healing after the devastating L.A. riots in 1992, the South Central Farmers have since created a miracle in one of the country’s most blighted neighborhoods. Growing their own food. Feeding their families. Creating a community. But now, bulldozers are poised to level their 14-acre oasis.
The Garden follows the plight of the farmers, from the tilled soil of this urban farm to the polished marble of City Hall. Mostly immigrants from Latin America, from countries where they feared for their lives if they were to speak out, we watch them organize, fight back, and demand answers: Why was the land sold to a wealthy developer for millions less than fair-market value? Why was the transaction done in a closed-door session of the LA City Council? Why has it never been made public? And the powers-that-be have the same response: “The garden is wonderful, but there is nothing more we can do.”
If everyone told you nothing more could be done, would you give up? The Garden has the pulse of verité with the narrative pull of fiction, telling the story of the country’s largest urban farm, backroom deals, land developers, green politics, money, poverty, power, and racial discord. The film explores and exposes the fault lines in American society and raises crucial and challenging questions about liberty, equality, and justice for the poorest and most vulnerable among us.
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Home (2005)
Single mother Sheree Farmer wants nothing more than to escape her gang-infested neighborhood and find a decent home for her six kids. Her only support comes from an activist named Mary Abernathy. Though Sheree knows the odds are stacked against her, foolish as it may be, she dares to hope for a better life. Directed by Jeffrey M. Togman, this heartbreaking documentary examines the uphill battle many face in chasing the American Dream.
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Farmingville (2004)
Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, P.O.V. presents FARMINGVILLE, a provocative, complex, and emotionally charged look into the ongoing nationwide controversy surrounding a suburban community, its ever-expanding population of illegal immigrants, and the shockingly hate-based attempted murders of two Mexican day laborers. In the late 1990s, some 1,500 Mexican workers moved to the leafy, middle-class town of Farmingville, population 15,000. In some ways, it’s a familiar American story: an influx of illegal immigrants crossing the border from Mexico to do work the locals won’t; rising tensions with the Anglo population; charges and counter-charges of lawlessness and racism; protest marches, unity rallies and internet campaigns--then vicious hate crimes that tear the community apart. But this isn’t the story of a California, Texas or other Southwestern city. It’s the endlessly entralling tale of Farmingville, New York, on Long Island. Sharply and intimately directed by Catherine Tambini and Carlos Sandoval, who moved to Farmingville after the tumultuous clash catapulted the town into national headlines, FARMINGVILLE is an astounding glimpse into an issue that continues to anger, frighten and confuse us.
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The Neo African Americans (2008)
Are you African American? Black? Hispanic? Caribbean? African? American? There are millions walking down the street who are ethnically African but not necessarily American, yet we call them African American. Consequently, the stories of some of the fastest growing immigrant populations have been lost in the traditional African American narrative. Consider that from 1980 and 2005, the foreign born black population more than tripled; Haitians quadrupled; Ethiopians increased 13 times.
The Neo African Americans explores how rapid, voluntary immigration from Africa and the Caribbean is transforming the African American narrative. These trends are powerfully transforming Black American identity, neighborhoods and academic institutions. The election of Barack Obama has made this an even more urgent and necessary conversation.
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Flag Wars (2003)
Shot over four years, "Flag Wars" is a poignant 90-minute account of economic competition between two historically oppressed groups, seen through the politics and pain of gentrification. The setting could be any city with a once stable working and middle class black community, now aging and economically depressed, in danger of losing control of their neighborhoods as wealthier home buyers gentrify block by block. In this case, the neighborhood is in Columbus, Ohio and the home buyers are largely white and gay.
The resulting conflicts are a case study of differences in perception. Where realtors and buyers see run-down homes, black residents see evidence of institutional racism that steered resources away from this community. What newer residents see as a beneficial effort to renovate and restore value, veteran residents see as an assault on their heritage and a threat to their ability to hold on to their homes.
The events in "Flag Wars" unfold against a backdrop of racism, homophobia, and tensions between privilege and poverty. Mix in government zoning boards, the court system, lending institutions, and civic leaders, and you've got a film that literally hits people "where they live." "Flag Wars" explores the complexity of gentrification, and the contradictions between intention and result, belief and action. It goes beyond merely assigning blame or labeling people as "good guys" or "bad guys" to examine the relationship between housing, heritage, and public policy.
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Sidewalk (2009)
Mitchell Duneier has nearly been arrested. He's slept on borrowed couches, gone hunting through trash, sold used magazines, and sat outside in the rain. This is life for the mostly homeless men who sell second-hand goods around Greenwich Village. And because it's their life, Duneier, a professor of sociology, made it his life. For seven years, he spent nearly every summer and semester break working among that community of unhoused book vendors in a quest to understand the dynamics of class, race and economics in America's inner cities. The film is directed by Barry Alexander Brown and based on Duneier’s book Sidewalk, which chronicles “the antisocial aspects of the street people, [while providing] a vivid, patient and moving account of those who have inched up from crime and despair to take control, however precarious and scruffy, of their lives. From behind the broken windows, human eyes peer out.” (Richard Eder, New York Times.)
Directed by Barry Alexander Brown, the editor of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, Malcom X, and When the Levees Broke and producer of the Academy Award finalist, The War at Home, with photographs by Ovie Carter, Pulitzer Prize winning photographer.
Discussion: Barry Alexander, Director; Mitchell Duneier, Writer and Associate Faculty, Center for African American Studies and Professor, Department of Sociology, Princeton University.
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