Precious Places Compilation Price:

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

While tourists head straight for the city’s official “Historic District” and native Philadelphian’s think they have seen it all, Scribe Video Center’s Precious Places Community History Project reveals bypassed neighborhood sites as bright landmarks that surprise and inspire residents and visitors alike. Using the video documentary as a storytelling medium, neighborhood residents have come together to document the oral histories of their communities. Over the past three and half decades Scribe has collaborated with community groups from Philadelphia, Chester, Ardmore, and Camden to produce over 100 community histories. Precious Places is a regional history, an occasion for neighbors to tell their own stories about and the people and places that make their communities unique. This DVD features 7 films.

Films Included In The Compilation:

More Than a Marker - Germantown Potter’s Field

Germantown

Germantown Potter’s Field is arguably the oldest black public cemetery in America, and tells of a history that was lost and forgotten then revived again and honored. Purchased in 1755, the burial ground known as Germantown Potter’s Field was to be used as a resting place for all strangers, Negroes, and Mulattoes that died in any part of Germantown. The story of the forgotten Germantown Potter’s Field came to light in 2011, when the Philadelphia Housing Authority publicly announced that their intention to construct a new housing development unit directly on the former burial site. As a result of various community meetings and an archaeological investigation, a great number of artifacts were found, and the specific area where ancestral remains were identified were left preserved. In 2017, a historical marker honoring the legacy of Germantown Potter’s Field was installed at the site of the redeveloped Queen Lane Apartments. The film is produced by Afrocentricity International. Runtime 9:49

The Philadelphia Clef Club: A Continuing Legacy

South Philadelphia

The Philadelphia Clef Club of Jazz and Performing Arts (PCC) was founded in 1935 by James Adams and members of Local No. 274 as the Local’s social club. Local No. 274 was Philadelphia’s African American musicians union. At a time when the city’s African American musicians struggled for political, economic and cultural recognition, Local No. 274 gave them representation and broke a tradition of segregation. With members such as John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Jimmy Smith, Lee Morgan, “Philly Joe Jones,” Grover Washington Jr, the Heath Brothers, Nina Simone, and Butch Ballard, Local No. 274 was crucial to the growth of a thriving jazz scene in Philadelphia. The PCC continued to function as a social club until 1978, when it expanded its activities to include jazz performance, jazz instruction, and the preservation of Philadelphia’s rich jazz history. The film is produced by the Philadelphia Clef Club. Runtime 9:09

Pier 53: They Came, They Stayed

South Philadelphia

Pier 53 encompass more than 250 years of Philadelphia and national history.  It was the location of the first Navy Yard in the United States, a shipbuilding pier, a Civil War embarkation and disembarkation point, a welcoming port for about a million immigrants into the United States, and a municipal pier for the City of Philadelphia. The film is produced by the Friends of Washington Avenue Green. Runtime 9:11

Boxing on Brooklyn A James Shuler Boxing Gym Story

West Philadelphia

Shuler's gym is located in West Philadelphia, right in between the blighted area known as "the bottom" and rapidly developing University. Primarily African American, Shuler's gym strives to create an environment that serves those from the underserved area.

The film is produced by the James Shuler Boxing Gym. Runtime 9:18

North Light Community Center

Roxborough-Manayunk

Founded as North Light Boys’ Club in 1936 as a drop-in center to divert community youth from delinquency and petty crime, North Light Community Center (NL) has organically evolved in response to changing community needs. Today, NL is a place where children learn and play in a safe and nurturing environment, teens learn life and entrepreneurial skills to realize their full potential, and families and individuals in need receive critical assistance. The film is produced by the North Light Community Center. Runtime 8:03

Dahlak Paradise

West Philadelphia

Dahlak Paradise is an Eritrean bar and restaurant that has served as an anchor for the Baltimore Avenue business corridor, East African community, and West Philly natives and transplants alike for the past 30 years. Beyond simply an establishment, Dahlak is an institution that serves as an important cultural and social meeting place for activists, artists, academics, neighbors, and more. The hope of peace between Ethiopia and Eritrea was realized in West Philly. The film is produced by the Selam Committee. Runtime 9:28

Stephen Smith

Belmont Philadelphia

Stephen Smith Tower Apartments is an affordable senior housing complex is named for abolitionist Stephen Smith who had a church, farm, graveyard as well as passage for the underground railroad in Philadelphia in this location. It was home to many who escaped slavery before, during and after the Civil War. The site was also a meeting place for the anti-slavery movement which included Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, William Still and Lucretia Mott. The film is produced by the residents of Stephen Smith Tower Apartments. Runtime 10:11

Disappearing Heritage: Freedom Theatre, Heritage House, and North Philadelphia

North Philadelphia

The Freedom Theatre is located in a mansion built in 1853 as the home of a beer magnate that was sold at a Sheriff's sale to Shakespearean actor Edwin Forrest. It was later the home of the Moore College of Art and Design. In the 1950's it became the home of Heritage House, a non profit organization established by Dr. Eugene Waymon Jones to provide educational and cultural activities for Black children. It was also the headquarters for the Philadelphia Cotillion Society also founded by Jones. Following Jones' death the building in 1966 became the home of Freedom Theater, headed up by John Allen, sharing space with Heritage House. In 1981 Freedom Theater took over the building. It was billed as Pennsylvania's oldest African American professional theater.

Today the 65,000-square-foot brownstone is dark and in danger of it succumbing to the encroachment of developers ,the expanding footprint of Temple University and extensive deterioration. Once a thriving center for the Black performing arts, in the heart of North Philadelphia's African American community, its future is structurally and fiscally shaky. The film is produced by the Disappearing Heritage Historic Group. Runtime 7:58

Quotes From Educators:

"It [Precious Places] moves documentary practice away from the individualistic and idiosyncratic, typified in projects likeSupersize Me (2004, by Morgan Spurlock) and Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004, by Michael Moore), towards collaborative interactions between neighborhoods, filmmakers, and scholars who create new histories. As a result, the project constitutes more than an intervention into the conceptualization of documentary. Importing concepts from postcolonial studies, the project shows how to embody difficult and sprawling polyvcalities and microhistories as a way to reclaim and revitalize ideas about the archive, history and memory.

Rather than creating a single authorial vision, Precious Places advances the collaborative ethnographic and historical model, where community participants become the authors and not simply the objects of community history."

-- an excerpt from Patricia Zimmerman's article "Imbedded Public Histories" published in Afterimage, March/April 2006