Clement Price, Newark historian at Rutgers University, introduced tonight’s screening of Marshall Curry’s “Street Fight” by explaining its relevance in the stream of documentaries about the city, including “City of Promise” and “Revolution: 1967″. He noted the film’s Oscar nomination, but explained that the film was ultimately was beaten out by “100 penguins”:http://wip.warnerbros.com/marchofthepenguins/.
We got started with the film shortly after Curry shared some additional words of introduction — though some technical difficulties at the outset prompted a member of the audience to ask, “Is there anyone here from NJIT?” It was fun to see the film again, this time with an audience. We laughed as one enthusiastic little girl declared that Booker “smells like the future,” and gasped in amazement as Curry caught James telling lie after lie down the campaign trail.
What struck me most about watching the film this time was how much the Booker team has grown since their run in 2002. The film opens as an officer from the Newark Housing Authority threatens to call the cops on Booker as he canvases a residential apartment building, then cuts to a scene where Booker is explaining how his “grassroots campaign” is looking to save money by cutting corners wherever possible. Fast forward to today where the “6.1 Million Dollar Man”:http://newark06.blogs.nytimes.com/?p=128 now leads his opponent in the polls by as much as 43%, as if his campaign was gliding along on rails.
Curry fielded questions at the end of the film, explaining that his interest in Newark began in 1991 when he started a literacy program for children. He covered issues like Booker’s support of school vouchers, how he dealt with the intimidation he experienced during the filming of the movie, and why he thought James dropped out of this year’s race. One observation that really seemed to grip Curry about the film — and the election itself — was how the media treated the city as if it were “another country”:http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110001676. People in the state of New Jersey just didn’t seem to care that much whether the election was run fairly and prefered to vew the rough-and-tumble race as if it were a sporting event. Even today, it’s still hard to find people who are interested in the city of Newark without drawn-out explanations of “why Newark matters”:http://blog.newarker.info/2006/04/15/why-newark-matters/.
After the screening, I got a chance to catch up with “Damien Cave”:http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/damien_cave/index.html?inline=nyt-per from the New York Times and co-writer of the “Newark06 blog”:http://newark06.blogs.nytimes.com/. I asked him a bit about how the Times is engaging its readers through the web and how the medium is being treated internally at the company. When he asked how I got involved in blogging about the city, I explained that I had moved here two years ago, and enthused about the city’s untapped potential. He explained to me that the city has been in the midst of this renaissance for a long time. “Every three years or so since 1990, you see this type of story about Newark.”
We agreed that perhaps Booker will be the catalyst the city needs for real change to take hold. I didn’t quite get the chance to ask Damien what will happen to the Times blog after the election, but I sure hope they stick around for what is sure to be an interesting year for the city of Newark.
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