Individual Film Price:

Higher Education Institutions & Government Agency DVD | $49.95
K-12 & Public Libraries DVD | $49.95
Home Video DVD License – Restrictions Apply | $5.95

Precious Places Compilation Price:

This video is available for purchase as part of a Precious Places Community History Project Pilot compilation DVD.

Higher Education Institutions & Government Agency DVD | $139.00
K-12 & Public Libraries DVD | $79.00
Home Video DVD License – Restrictions Apply | $20.00

Scribe Video Center Program:

The Precious Places Community History Project is a community oral history project inviting members of the Philadelphia region's many neighborhoods to document the buildings, public spaces, parks, landmarks and other sites that hold the memories of our communities and define where we live. Precious Places teaches the video production process to participating groups, fostering projects authored by those who intimately know the featured neighborhoods. This film was produced as part of the pilot program for Philadelphia Planning Commission's Community Heritage Preservation Project.

Film Summary:

William "Sonny" Martin, Bertha S. Waters and other longtime residents of West Philadelphia's Belmont neighborhood reflect on the area's prosperous past in the first half of the century, its slow economic decline, and the efforts of the Belmont Improvement Association, the Calvary Church and other concerned organizations and individual residents to revitalize the area, with or without sustained governmental assistance. Particular emphasis is given to the good and the less so -- including the area's main drag, the distressed commercial strip of Lancaster Avenue, abandoned architectural riches, colorful and well-maintained murals, the recently defunct Women's Hospital of Philadelphia, and newly installed sidewalks.

Press: 
July 28, 2004 | "Movie-ing on Up: A Scribe Video Center summer film series goes into the neighborhoods," Philadelphia Weekly

Public Screenings, Broadcasts, and Festivals: 
7/31/04 | Street Movies screening at Holly Street Garden, Osage Avenue and Budd Street (Philadelphia, PA)

Film Stills: