Several West Philly community organizations are joining forces to throw a block party and street film festival this Saturday at the Haddington Memorial Garden at 54th and Wyalusing.

The Neighborhood Foods Block Party will feature a flea market, vendors, live music, spoken word performances, food and film screenings. The event runs from 4-9 p.m.

Community leaders from Haddington, The Enterprise Center and the Urban Tree Connection started the youth-driven Neighborhood Foods project to bring attention to urban farming operations and food justice issues. The organization uses urban farming to address problematic issues in the neighborhood, including crime and poverty.

A few highlights of Saturday’s event include:

• Performances by Ursula Rucker and Tim Motzer.
• Scribe Video Center outdoor screenings of short films.
• Dyana Williams will emcee.

For more information, check out the event Facebook page here.

Scribe Video Center (4212 Chestnut Street 3rd Floor) presents a special Storyville screening of short films about Arab and Muslim communities in the U.S. tonight at 7 p.m. The films Arab American Road Movie (2005, 14 min), Tales from Arab Detroit (1995, 45 min), I, Too, Sing America and 9-11 Moments (2002) are produced by Detroit-based filmmaker Joan Mandell who will be at the screening in person.

Tickets are $5 for general public, free for Scribe members, Muslim Voices participants and Al Bustan Seeds of Culture staff, students and members.

Mandell will also present a workshop on oral history tomorrow, July 9, at 11 a.m. You can register online here or by calling 215-222-4201. Tickets for this event are $20 for general public, $10 for Scribe members and free for Muslim Voices participants.

To read more about both events click here.
 

Tonight the Scribe Video Center (4212 Chestnut St.) will host a screening and discussion of two fascinating multimedia pieces documenting the economic downturn in the United States over the last three years. In Verse combines poetry, photography and audio footage to document the lives of people living on the economic edge.

In the piece “Women of Troy,” poet Susan B.A. Somers-Willett, photographer Brenda Ann Kenneally and radio journalist Lu Olkowski (who will be at tonight’s screening) document the lives of young, working-class mothers in Troy, New York, which was a thriving city during the industrial revolutions but is now enmeshed in poverty.

The second piece, “Congregation,” Pulitzer Prize winning poet Natasha Trethewey , photographer Joshua Cogan and radio journalist Olkowski document the ongoing recovery in Gulfport, Mississippi following Hurricane Katrina.

The screening begins at 7 p.m. Tickets are $10, $8 for students and seniors and $5 for Scribe members.

Below is an exerpt of “Women of Troy”

In Verse: Women of Troy from InVerse on Vimeo.

The seventh piece in a documentary series on South African and the global apartheid movement will screen Nov. 16 at 7:30 at the International House (3701 Chestnut St.). Free At Last, the final piece in the seven-part series Have You Heard From Johannesburg, tells the story of the movement in the 1980s: “the alliance that brought together freedom fighters in South Africa as never before.” Director Connie Field will be on hand for the screening. She will also teach a documentary master class on her work before the screening at the Scribe Video Center (4212 Chestnut, 3rd floor). If you attend the master class, you get into the screening for free.

See map: Google Maps

Have You Heard Trailer

Subway construction in Philadelphia. (Photo courtesy of Scribe Video Center)

Nine young documentarians will put their hard work on display tomorrow night at the Griffith Auditorium at the University of the Sciences (600 S. 43rd). Their 40-minute piece, The History of Mass Transit in Philadelphia, weaves themes of cultural expression, health, history and movement of goods. The work is part of the Scribe Video Center‘s Documentary History Project for Youth, a project aimed at youth in grades 8-12. The event is free and open to the public.