WEST HARLEM — Shawn Batey spent 10 years shooting a documentary about Harlem's struggle to keep its identity in the face of gentrification.
From 2000 to 2010, she spoke with residents, business owners, politicians, developers and activists as she captured a decade’s worth of change in the neighborhood.
“I used to live in Chicago in a neighborhood called Bucktown in the 90’s,” she said. “It was a working class polish and Puerto Rican neighborhood. Things were changing and I wanted to do a film…but it didn’t get off the ground.”
When she moved to Harlem 14 years ago, she noticed some of the same changes and began to film. Over the next several years, she was able to capture the direction of change, she said.
“It really touches the audience,” she said of a screening earlier this year. “There are people that see places that they saw or remember from growing up and I can hear the ohh’s and awww’s.”
Her documentary, "Changing Face of Harlem," will be one of more than 90 films being showcased at the Harlem International Film Festival this week.
The festival kicks off it's ninth year at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Columbia University with the U.S. premier of "Children of the Light," a documentary about the life and legacy of Desmond Tutu.
The festival is spread out over three venues — Columbia University, City College and Maysles Documentary Center — from Wednesday to Sunday. General admission tickets are $25.
While not every film focuses on Harlem, several directors chose to focus on the neighborhood.
“I was very fascinated with Harlem, I always heard about it in the films,” said Indrani Kopal, a Malaysian photojournalist who moved to New York to study film. “Harlem fascinated me so much and the gentrification also fascinated me.”
Kopal has two movies in the festival, "Game Changer," about a woman who teaches inmates upstate how to dance, and "Live Jazz with Bill Saxton," which follows the saxophone player around his Harlem speakeasy on 133rd Street.
Her goal is to show people the beauty of Harlem and encourage them to visit the neighborhood. Whenever anyone visits her, she always takes them to Bill’s Place, she said.
“I have friends who live in New Jersey, friends who live in Brooklyn, friends who live in Queens that have never been to Harlem,” she said. “They never thought they had a reason to go there.”
Kopal, who has shown her films in festivals around the country, is particularly excited to show "Game Changer" in Harlem because many of the former inmates who now perform with Figures in Flight Released live nearby.
They will all be performing before the Thursday screening, she said.
The festival has a mix of 15-minute shorts, hour-long films, documentaries and features. Some combine aspects of different genres.
You Are Not Alone, for instance, tells the story of gay Black men and reenacts traumatic scenes from their lives. The film looks at the relationship between high rates of HIV, living in stressful environments and depression, director Antoine Craigwell said.
Screenings tend to turn into therapy sessions, he added.
“It’s something that is not talked about,” Craigwell, who lstarted Depressed Black Gay Men, an organization to support gay men dealing with depression said. “People open up and share their experiences after the film. They talk about their personal experiences for the first time and they do it publicly.”
An all access pass for the entire festival is $99 and an all-day pass can be had for $25 through their website.
