Spring 2004 Friday Speaker Series
February 6
Miriam
Camitta
Making Crosstown: producing a documentary from a folklorist's perspective
'Crosstown' is the story of the neighborhood-led fight in
Philadelphia in the 1960's and 1970's to stop the city from
building a federally funded highway through the old neighborhoods
of downtown Philadelphia. The history-making defeat of the
highway, called the Crosstown Expressway, prevented a racial and
class divide that would have physically separated poorer and
African-American neighborhoods from new, renovated upscale
residential areas and preserved a culturally and economically
significant main street, and set precendents in environmental law.
On-camera speakers directly involved in the fight include:
Philadelphia planner Edmund Bacon, former Philadelphia Mayor W.
Wilson Goode; South Philadelphia housing activist Alice Lipscomb;
planner and architect Denise Scott Brown; South Street Renaissance
mosaic artist Isaiah Zagar; and South Philadelphia civil rights
activists George Dukes and Eddie Williams.
"enlightening...vital and contemporary." - Sam Adams, Right
Here, Right Now, Philadelphia City Paper
Crosstown was partially funded by WYBE TV35 and was broadcast
as part of Philadelphia Stories Series. Crosstown was was shown in
the City Paper Festival of Independents during the Philadelphia
Festival of World Cinema 2001 and was nominated for best
documentary.
Miriam Camitta is a folklorist and independent film maker who
has worked and published in the fields of literacy, education, and
urban studies for thirty years. Crosstown draws on her ten year
study of twentieth century highway planning in Philadelphia and
its affect on traditional culture and social life in communities.
She is currently writing and working on a film about illness and
belief in parents of children with a life threatening disease. Dr.
Camitta earned her Ph.D. in Folklore and Folklife at the
University of Pennsylvania, and teaches in the University's
Graduate School of Education
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