“Place Based Histories in West Philadelphia”: Three screenings and discussion

Three screenings featuring The Bombing of Osage Avenue, By Your Side, and Precious Places: Cobbs Creek Community Environmental Education Center.

With discussants:

• Debbie Africa (filmmaker)
• Mike Africa, Sr. (filmmaker)
• Louis Massiah (filmmaker, MLK Scholar/Open Documentary Lab)
• Moderator: Garnette Cadogan

The Bombing of Osage Avenue (USA, 57 minutes, 1987)

Filmmakers: Louis Massiah and Toni Cade Bambara

On Mother’s Day, 1985, a virtual army of city and state police converged on a quiet block in the African-American community of Cobb’s Creek, a neighborhood of parks and streams, children on bicycles, aluminum siding and basketball stars. By the next day, 61 homes were destroyed and 11 people were dead, all members of the communitarian MOVE organization. In this documentary history, filmmaker Louis Massiah establishes the setting for the tragedy early on, and Toni Cade Bambara’s poetic narration draws us deeper into the drama. Neighbors recall the coming of MOVE members, unusual in their back-to-nature lifestyle, and the “incidents” — including trash thrown into their yards and profanities blasting over loudspeakers — which caused their relationship with the community to deteriorate. Eventually the close-knit community called on city officials to deal with MOVE members, unwittingly opening a Pandora’s Box. The bombing referred to in the documentary’s title was ordered by the Philadelphia police with the acquiescence of then-mayor, W. Wilson Goode, shortly after a gun battle with 500 hundred city police officers ensued.

By Your Side (USA, 16 minutes, 2021)

Filmmakers: Mike Africa, Sr. (Michael Davis) and Debbie Africa (Debbie A. Davis)

Mike and Debbie Africa, members of the MOVE organization, created a documentary memoire to tell their own story. Having each spent 40 years in prison separated from their children and families, they examine the repressive political context that shaped their lives and more importantly how determination, clarity, morality and love allowed them to persevere and re-unite as a family.

Precious Places: Cobbs Creek Community Environmental Education Center (USA, 11 minutes, 2023)

Filmmakers: Cobbs Creek Community Environmental Education Center and Scribe Video Center

Carole Williams-Green, a retired public school science teacher, is the catalyst to transform an abandoned horse stable in Southwest Philadelphia into a community asset, an environmental center. This film was produced as part of Scribe Video Center’s Precious Places Community History Project.