Individual Film Price:

Precious Places Compilation Price:

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.

Videomaking Consultant: muthi reed
Humanities Consultant: Jacqueline Hart
Post Production Consultant: Ellen Reynolds

Film Summary:

With its run-down housing, neglected infrastructure and isolated location, residents of Grays Ferry say the city paid little attention to their neighborhood before the infamous street confrontations between working class whites and blacks in the 1990s. The media dubbed Audenried High School a "prison on the hill" after a spate of violent incidents between students. A racially diverse but segregated South Philadelphia neighborhood isolated between a highway and a river, the phrase Grays Ferry had become a slur to some Philadelphians. Then, in 2004, the high school and the Tasker Homes housing complex was slated for demolition, signaling the beginning of a new but uncertain future for the neighborhood.

Rising on the Hill, a counterpoint to the prison metaphor, vividly portrays a neighborhood on the brink of change. Students and residents reflect on their community and debate the benefits and dangers of revitalization: Are demolitions necessary? Will a high-tech new high school and better housing bring greater opportunities to the community, or leave long-time residents by the wayside in favor of wealthier newcomers? Shot by 12 Audenried students, Rising on the Hill shows a community narrative that is both unique to Grays Ferry and emblematic of widespread forces of urban neglect, racial tensions, and the uncertain outcomes of neighborhood revitalization.

Press:

November 1, 2007 | "From the ashes" by Amanda L. Snyder, South Philly Review
November 9, 2007 | "A Sense of Community," The Sixth Square
December 26, 2018 | "New Museum of Black Civilizations in Senegal has strong Philly ties" by Bobbi Booker, The Philadelphia Tribune

Public Screenings, Broadcasts and Festivals: 

February 7, 2017 | Broadcast on WHYY-TV
December 26, 2018 | Rising On The Hill is on permanent display at the Museum of Black Civilizations in Dakar, Senegal

Film Stills: