The event centers around a documentary, Midwood Movie, directed by Melissa Friedling (2024). See description below. The event will feature a conversation between the director, Melissa Friedling; film historian Cara Caddoo; and BC Anthropology Professor Kelly Britt. During the event, short clips from the film will be shown.

Midwood is a feature experimental documentary about both a Brooklyn, New York neighborhood and about motion pictures and their development. Shot over 12 years entirely on and around the former site of the American Vitagraph Company which began producing silent films there in 1906, the film digs through layered histories, presenting an array of individual accounts of the site’s varied uses along with subjective appraisals of its importance.  While excavating manifold media forms and formats, the film encounters artifacts and artists entangled in harm and intolerance. In so doing, Midwood Movie contextualizes media and its monuments as contested sites of memory, culture, and politics.

Link to trailer