Portland African American Film Festival: now through Sunday.

Ron Craig, Executive Director of the Portland African American Film Festival, opens the Festival’s webpage with this message:

In my younger days in Portland, Oregon, growing up on Cook Street between 7th and Union [now MLK Boulevard] Avenues, where every house had young people running and playing during all four seasons, there was always a place to run and play.

But let me take you inside my memories: Saturday afternoons at the once majestic Egyptian Theatre on NE Union and Russell Streets, with its exotic pillars, pyramids, cast stone panels, ornamental urns and lotus flower motifs! As a youngster, this was the place I would come to see people run, laugh and fly (without an airplane)! For me it was partly a dream (oh, to fly without that plane!) but overall, it was this young black man making a mental list of people and places he wished to see, and things he would like to do.

Now you may ask what this has to do with the PDX African American Film Festival. Well, those very Saturday afternoons in the dark in the Egyptian Theatre put me on the course to be a filmmaker and to host two international film festivals—one in my home town of Portland, Oregon, the PDX African American Film Festival—and the other in Astoria, Oregon, the Astoria International Film Festival, which just completed its fourth year.

The Portland African American Film Festival is showing films until Sunday, this weekend. This year’s festival includes a screening of the documentary Imaging Home: Stories of Columbia Villa:

Columbia Villa, a troubled and dilapidated Portland public housing neighborhood originally built to house WWII shipyard workers and later ravaged by gangs and drugs, is demolished, displacing 1,300 residents. In its place, New Columbia, a federal HOPE VI urban redevelopment project, emerges as a model for progressive community building. Imagining Home follows several Columbia Villa families from displacement to relocation back into New Columbia over four years.

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“Imaging Home” at the Portland Playhouse.

From the website for Hare in the Gate Productions, a company ‘making films that explore diverse issues, strive to preserve culture, forge connections, and foster positive change’:

IMAGINING HOME

“They haven’t asked anybody to come and change their world. So if we’re going to change their world, I think we ought to at least give them the opportunity to talk about those changes, be part of those changes.”
-Ed Washington, former Portland Metro Councilor

Columbia Villa, a troubled and dilapidated Portland public housing neighborhood originally built to house WWII shipyard workers and later ravaged by gangs and drugs, is demolished, displacing 1,300 residents. In its place, New Columbia, a federal HOPE VI urban redevelopment project, emerges as a model for progressive community building. This socio-economically mixed neighborhood provides new homes, a school, retail and work opportunities, and other amenities for about 3,000 residents. Many original Columbia Villa occupants have returned, but will they succeed in fighting stereotypes of race and class and making this new neighborhood truly ‘home’?

Imagining Home follows several Columbia Villa families from displacement to relocation back into New Columbia over four years. Through their stories, we learn how resident involvement is crucial to a growing national movement in community building. But will the voices of low-income families continue to be heard, as renewed friction arises in New Columbia?

With a current national climate of economic uncertainty, with housing crises and an arguably shrinking middle-class, and with gentrification, immigration, and economic and ethnic tensions rising, this film challenges: can we afford not to demand that our cities invest in creating diverse, equitable, and sustainable communities?

Millie Perez, a Cuban refugee, moved to Columbia Villa to stabilize her family in public housing. Contrary to negative stereotypes of “the Villa,” Millie relished the cultural diversity and solidarity she found there. An African American single mother of six, Nicole Crain, struggles to attain a living wage through becoming an apprentice carpenter. Marie Llanos, an Oglala Sioux mother of eight, has fought poverty, alcoholism, and discrimination, but is determined to offer her kids a better life. Terry McLain, a disabled senior, and his wife Linda are raising two children adopted from a relative fighting drug addiction. Luvenia Jackson, a resident of Columbia Villa since 1973, witnessed the immediate aftermath of the state’s first drive-by gang killing, and vowed to provide a better life for her eight children. In 2007, these former Columbia Villa families, and many more, have returned to New Columbia to live side-by-side with new residents, lower-and middle-class renters and homeowners, seeking the qualities they know make a safe and nurturing community.

Although hailed as a bold advance in urban redevelopment, New Columbia has drawn critics both outside and within the community. They charge that planning of permanent mixed-income neighborhoods is “social engineering,” and forecast the decline of the community into divisive disarray. Homeowners and renters with different living styles clash as the population grows. Racial tensions emerge as the summer draws large groups of mostly African American teens into the central park in what are termed “flash mobs.” In 2007, Portland’s reputation as one of America’s most livable and liberal cities is tested, and stereotypes again run rampant as they did when Columbia Villa occupied the same site.

But beneath intense scrutiny lies undeniable strength: where many HOPE VI developments in the U.S. have fallen tragically short, New Columbia has embraced many former residents, and provides programs and services that not only help families achieve self-sufficiency, but to create dialogue among diverse residents. Most striking is the way former residents like Millie, Nicole, Marie, Terry, and Luvenia fight to unite neighbors across economic, racial, and cultural divides and create a just and sustainable community.

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