(First Look) 'American Dreams: Lived, Lost, and Longstanding'

By Kirin Lawrence, SUNY Purchase College Film BFA

Documentary Treatment:

At 2029 Second Avenue, between 104th and 105th Street in East Harlem El Barrio, NYC stands a towering residential block, housing 263 tenants above the age of 62 and routinely hosting dozens of other senior members of the community brought in by bingo, birthday parties, and community meals. These working-class senior citizens’ Section 8 apartments are neglected and in a state of disrepair. The majority of them are Spanish or Mandarin-speaking. Many are immigrants. Many of them live alone, isolated from and unknown to their neighbours while many others share their lives with local friends at churches, potlucks, and on group accessibility bike trips. Although these seniors are a growing demographic, equal in size to the population of 5 to 17 year-olds in the same neighbourhood, they receive a fraction of the resources. Many sit at home, feeling disconnected and forgotten by the city everchanging outside their window.

My name is Kirin Lawrence. I’m an East-Harlem-based filmmaker. I have been volunteering at events with these seniors, as well as serving as one of their “pilots” for our accessibility-bikes called Trishaws for a couple years now through Inner Change East Harlem & Cycling Without Age NYC. I live just a 5-minute walk from their building, Gaylord White Houses. Having been radicalised most predominantly by the Black Lives Matter and Palestinian Liberation movements and raised to value and participate in community organising and local-level social justice work, I have a highly critical perception of the term “The American Dream”. I find it to be inseparable from a bloody history of White Supremacist Imperialism. But with this documentary I see to ask, what does that longstanding promise of endless opportunity and self-determination mean to El Barrio seniors?

American Dreams: Lived, Lost, and Longstanding will bring its audience in close to moments of shared excitement and joy in the lives of these seniors: the annual Christmas party & carol singing followed by a trip to the Park Avenue Tree Lighting, a joint birthday party celebrating a number of residents, scenic Trishaw trips through the Central Park conservatory gardens and speeding down hills while waving at tourists in pedicabs and kids in playgrounds. Surrounding these scenes will be a series of interviews of El Barrio seniors answering the following questions: Who are you? What’s your story? What brought you here to East Harlem (if not born here)? What are your hopes for the future (of this neighbourhood, city, country, world, politics, economy, ways of thinking) and do you believe younger generations are bringing us closer or further from them? How have those hopes evolved over the years? If you could change one thing (about this neighbourhood, city, country, world, politics, economy, ways of thinking) what would it be? What does community look like to you? Where do you seek it? What do you receive from it? And of course, what does “The American Dream” mean to you? Has your perception of it changed throughout your life? How so?

This documentary will treat these seniors with care, not forcing them under a magnifying glass and grilling them for specific answers, but highlighting the beauty and power in their stories and beliefs. It should be an accurate reflection of them that I hope they will appreciate. The interviews will employ a soft focus look, minimal equipment, and familiar environments.