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An Urban Humanities Initiative

Mean Streets: The Divided City through the Lens of Film & Television

Robert Hansman, Brian Woodman, Cliff Froehlich

“Mean Streets: Viewing the Divided City Through the Lens of Film and Television” was held during the St. Louis International Film Festival (SLIFF, which ran from Nov. 3-13, 2016), with a “preview” event on Sept. 26 as part of the Greater St. Louis Humanities Festival. “Mean Streets” included seven programs on Nov. 11-13 at the Missouri History Museum, six programs on Nov. 5-6 at Washington University’s Brown Hall, one screening on Nov. 6 at the St. Louis Public Library’s Central Library, and one screening on Nov. 10 at Ritenour High School. All films included post-screening Q&As with film directors, film subjects, and academic facilitators from Washington University and beyond, Faculty participants included scholars from the American Culture Studies, African and African-American Studies, Performing Arts, Political Science, History, and German, and Jewish Studies departments at Washington University, as well as facilitators from American University, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, and the National Blues Museum.

Several films in the “Mean Streets” program were presented to high school groups as a collaboration with Cinema St. Louis’ Cinema for Students program, which brings films, filmmakers, and film subjects into dialogue with middle school and high school students from around the St. Louis region.

“Mean Streets,” with additional support from American Culture Studies at Washington University, included a daylong documentary seminar on Nov. 5 at Washington University’s West Campus Library. The seminar consisted of three master classes: Fair Use & Copyright, with a screening of the documentary “Other People’s Footage” and filmmaker and scholar Diane Carson; Archival Footage, with filmmaker and Washington University Libraries archivist Brian Woodman; and Editing, with filmmaker and critic Robert Greene. Similarly, screenwriter Kevin Wilmott — who accompanied the screening of “Chi-Raq” — conducted a master class in narrative film, Screenwriting for Independent Film, on Nov. 12 at Washington University’s West Campus Library. A total of 53 filmmakers, scholars, critics, and documentary subjects participated in “Mean Streets” programming.

Goals and Outcomes

The screening series hoped to achieve several goals in terms of program content, community outreach, and historical documentation.

Content

The films of “Mean Streets” explored a variety of social, political, and economic issues that intersect with the larger problems of racial, ethnic, and religious divisions within cities, both large and small, nationally and worldwide.

Locally relevant films included the double bill of “More Than One Thing” and “The Pruitt-Igoe Myth” (both dealing with St. Louis’ notorious Pruitt-Igoe housing development), director Jun Bae’s double feature of “Bob’s Tour” and “Exodus” (both dealing with the current state of North St. Louis, economic revitalization, and the risks involved in urban renewal), “Gentlemen of Vision” (about North County’s competitive step team), and a program of Ferguson-related shorts.

Nationally focused programming included films dealing with racial divides in other large cities: the current inequities in and plight of Camden, N.J. (“Camden: Love/Hate”), the problems of violence and racism in Chicago (“Chi-Raq,” the Kartemquin shorts program), the mass incarceration of blacks in a specific zip code in Milwaukee (“Milwaukee 53206”), the difficulties faced by African-American adults in earning their high-school degrees in a low-income area of Indianapolis (“Night School”), and the struggle of an African-American laborer to keep himself and his family alive in the Los Angeles enclave of Watts (“Killer of Sheep”).

Rather than focus exclusively on large urban areas, “Mean Streets” also examined racial fissures in smaller communities, such as a Georgia county rocked by the murder of a young African-American man by an elderly white man (“Southern Rites”), the rupture of a small North Carolina town after high-school basketball star Allen Iverson was jailed for alleged involvement in a physical altercation with local white residents (“No Crossover”), and the intersection of civil rights and blues music in small segregated Southern communities during 1964’s Freedom Summer (“Two Trains Runnin’”).

“Mean Streets” included two films from an international perspective, “The Peacemaker” and “Bogdan’s Journey,” which focused on religious and ethnic divides and the difficult search for common ground.

The Q&As for all of these films broadened the discussion to relate each film’s content to other local, national, and, in some cases, international contexts. The discussions sought to include the perspectives of film subjects, filmmakers, academics, and audience members in the dialogue to encourage engagement and the sharing of ideas among various stakeholders.

Finally, the “Mean Streets” program brought together both established and emerging filmmaking talent who deal with issues of divided communities. “Mean Streets” included such significant filmmaking names as Charles Burnett, one of the influential figures in the “L.A. Rebellion” of independent African-American filmmakers (“Killer of Sheep”); Oscar-nominated filmmaker Steve James, known for “No Crossover” (screening as part of “Mean Streets”), “Hoop Dreams,” and “The Interrupters”; Gillian Laub, respected international photographer and director of “Southern Rites”, and Gordon Quinn, founder of the influential social-justice media collaborative Kartemquin Films. The program also highlighted such emerging filmmakers as Jun Bae, a recent Washington University graduate, current film students at University of Missouri (Adam Dietrich, Varun Bajaj and Kellan Marvin, co-directors of short film “Concerned Student 1950”), and the Camden, N.J., high-school filmmaking collaborators behind “Camden: Love/Hate.” The program also attempted to highlight filmmakers from diverse backgrounds in terms of race, ethnicity, and geographic locale.

Community Outreach 

“Mean Streets” hoped to integrate various levels of community and scholarly outreach. The free programming was presented at several venues across the region to appeal to multiple audiences, including college students and faculty (Washington University’s Brown Hall), individuals within the central city core (the St. Louis Public Library), audiences on both sides of the city/county divide (Missouri History Museum), and residents of St. Louis’ North City and near-North County communities (Ritenour High School), a portion of the region with few film screening venues. The mixture of filmmakers, film participants, and faculty in discussions encouraged a free flow of ideas among artists, citizens, and scholars, resulting in the unpacking of complex problems and the sharing of ideas and potential solutions that have application locally, nationally, and internationally, within the academy and within diverse communities.

Through SLIFF’s free Cinema for Students Program, “Mean Streets” also considered the importance of secondary-school educators and students in the discussion of divided communities. Two of the “Mean Streets” films — “Bob’s Tour” and “Gentlemen of Vision” —screened for area elementary, middle and high schools. “Bob’s Tour” screened on Nov. 8 at the Missouri History Museum for multiple schools. “Gentlemen of Vision” screened on Nov. 4 at St. Louis U.’s Center for Global Citizenship (SLU) for the full student body of Cardinal Ritter High School; Nov. 7 at SLU for multiple schools; Nov. 9 at Hancock Middle School; and Nov. 11 at the Christian Academy.

In conjunction with Washington U.’s online journal The Common Reader, “Mean Streets” also published five essays about issues related to the Divided City:

1. Dance and the Divided City by Joanna Dee Das

2. The Wire & the City by Calvin Wilson

3. Touring the Divided City by Jasmine Mahmoud

4. “Don’t do day here” by Chris King

5. Remembering Pruitt-Igoe by Sylvester Brown Jr.

“Mean Streets,” with the support of American Culture Studies, encouraged public education related to film and filmmaking through its master-class workshops. These workshops, each with practicing professionals in the field, demystified the filmmaking process for community participants at all skill levels, providing practical advice for telling stories artfully and on a restricted budget. The workshops covered such topics as copyright and fair use, the art and ethics of using archival materials, the complexities of building stories through editing, and ways of writing and producing films entirely independently.

The St. Louis International Film Festival generates substantial press coverage. “Mean Streets” – both the program overall and individual films – received serious media attention. SLIFF also produces a program (available for viewing here) that is distributed in the full 30,000-copy run of the St. Louis alternative weekly, The Riverfront Times, and at all venue sites. “Mean Streets” was prominently featured in the program and on SLIFF’s website.

Total attendance for public film screenings was 1,683, and attendance for Cinema for Students presentations was 756. An additional 140 participated in the filmmaking workshops. Total attendance for all “Mean Streets” programming was 2,579.

Historical Documentation

To preserve the ideas shared at “Mean Streets” presentations for posterity, the Washington University Libraries video-recorded the majority of post-film discussions. Releases were acquired from participants, and digital files of Q&As will be housed in the Washington University Libraries’ Film & Media Archive for use by students, faculty, scholars, and interested community members. Select clips from the Q&As also will be made available online for educational purposes.

In addition, Washington University Libraries performed an audio oral-history interview with Billy and Tommie Towns, former Pruitt-Igoe residents who are featured in “More Than One Thing” and “The Pruitt-Igoe Myth.” The oral history is now available at the archive and will be included in an online exhibit related to “More Than One Thing,” which will be available via the Libraries’ website. The exhibit will include a streaming version of the completed film, oral-history snippets, stills from the making of “More Than One Thing,” and edited pieces that combine footage/stills with oral-history clips. The online exhibit will highlight both the making of the film and the personal experiences of Billy and Tommie Towns as children growing up in Pruitt-Igoe. Much of this information will be available to scholars and the public for the first time.

Robert Hansman is Associate Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at Washington University in St. Louis.

Brian Woodman is curator of Film & Media Archive at Washington University in St. Louis Libraries.

Cliff Froehlich is executive director of Cinema St. Louis.