A Brown professor's documentary about the transformation of South Providence will air on the state's Public Broadcasting Service this weekend.
"Southside: The Fall and Rise of an Inner-City Neighborhood," a 55-minute documentary created by Associate Professor of Sociology Hilary Silver, tells the story of the ups and downs of the neighborhood and current efforts at its revitalization.
The documentary will air Saturday at 7 p.m. on Rhode Island PBS, which is channel 36 in Providence and channel 26 on Brown's cable lineup.
Funded by the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities, the film traces the neighborhood's history from an earlier time when it was occupied predominantly by white or black residents. Later, in the 70s and 80s, local organizations were developed to create new housing and jobs, and immigrants from places like Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic started moving in.
The film details the efforts and successes of the neighborhood residents who joined hands to revitalize the neighborhood after it went through a period of deterioration, during which the community suffered from depopulation, abandonment and arson.
"I made (the film) because I wanted people from the neighborhood to hear the story about how neighborhoods in general can turn themselves around," Silver said, "how neighborhoods, if they organize and work with partners, are able to overcome deteriorated conditions."
Silver said the film is special because it doesn't have an outside narrator. "It's all made by people in the neighborhood, strung together, expressing themselves," she said. "My goal was to let the community speak for itself."
Silver said she chose PBS to broadcast the documentary because public television reaches a wide audience.
"This is a neighborhood that has come back," she said. "It has come back from the residents themselves. People of color are able to retain their neighborhood and still develop it."
But Silver also said she hopes the film will reach and inspire people beyond Rhode Island.
"This is a general story that can be applied in many different cities and in different neighborhoods," she said. "People can learn the lessons from South Providence and apply them to other places."
Though it took two years to make the documentary, Silver said her knowledge of the neighborhood has accumulated over nearly 20 years.
In the 80s, she first became interested in the South Side because of her research interests in social issues like urban poverty and racial discrimination. She and her students conducted fieldwork in the neighborhood, accumulated data and wrote research papers on the area.
"After about 20 years of this, it became clear that there is a story to tell," she said.
During their time as Brown undergraduates, Stephanie Breakstone '06, Julia Liu '06 and former Herald Editor-in-Chief Robbie Corey-Boulet '07, assisted in the film's production.
A campus screening of the film and discussion with Silver will take place Feb. 23 in the Joukowsky Forum at the Watson Institute for International Studies.
