Posted by Gregory Jenkins, the executive director of the Somerville Arts Council, on its daily newsletter:
Coordinated by Nellie Kluz as part of a community benefit for a Somerville Arts Council LCC fellowship grant.
MISSION HILL AND THE MIRACLE OF BOSTON
by Richard Broadman (60 min)
"The story of what happened to Mission Hill is the story of many of America's older ethnic neighborhoods. Seventy years ago, Mission Hill was an Irish neighborhood of homes and small stores in which people lived near their schools, their church, and their shopping area. But between 1940 and 1980 it changed: thousands of units of public housing
were built and decayed there. Nearby hospitals expanded, displacing people from their homes. Developers and speculators bought and sold property and built twenty-story apartment houses. A new, poor population and an affluent professional population arrived to compete for parts of the old neighborhood."
http://www.der.org/films/mission-hill.html
<http://www.der.org/films/mission-hill.html>
IF IT FITS
by John Marshall (58 minutes)
"The once thriving industrial town of Haverhill, Massachusetts on the Merrimack River now resembles, in the words of one of the film's subjects, "a ghost town where you expect to see tumbleweeds come rolling down Main Street." This film examines a dying industrial town and its
politicians' search for votes over such issues as municipal spending, rising taxes, the revitalization of depressed areas, and attracting new industry. The film's central event is the 1976 Mayoral election."
http://www.der.org/films/if-it-fits.html
<http://www.der.org/films/if-it-fits.html>
