Mission Hill And The Miracle Of Boston February 28, 2006

In celebration of the Photographic Resource Center's recent exhibition, "Document: Contemporary Social Documentary Work from Greater Boston", we present a rarely-seen classic of documentary cinema, and a stunning vision of Boston history as it unfolds. Documentarian Richard Broadman's 1978 film traces the history of the Mission Hill area of Roxbury through interviews with residents old and new. In the 1970s urban renewal and a public housing project (from which Mission Hill earned it's now-standard moniker) were forcing changes on the then largely Irish Catholic neighborhood. This chronicle of racial conflict, when a new poor population butted heads with the old residents of the neighborhood, is a stunning reverse look at today's issues in the same neighborhood - where college students and young professionals are moving in and ever-soaring rents are pushing out the poor.