Mt Baker Meaningful Movies and First Church Meaningful Movies are partnering with PBS/Indie Lens to screen Razing Liberty Square on January 18th at 6PM. We will also be providing access to the film Stories of Us: Camp Second Chance. A community conversation for both films will be held at 12 noon on January 21st. Special Guests will include director, Melinda Raebyne, musician, Dain Norman and homeless advocate Dakoda Foxx.
Film Description for Stories of Us:
STORIES OF US: CAMP SECOND CHANCE introduces director Melinda Raebyne, as she embeds herself one winter at one of Seattle’s homeless camps, Camp Second Chance, challenging public ignorance and humanizing a population that locals would rather neglect, sharing with you some of their personal stories and her actual experience of what it’s like to be homeless. By putting faces to the statistics and a voice to their stories, she humanizes a population in ways that allow viewers to see themselves and better relate to a neglected and often “forgotten population.”
What’s possible when society’s “forgotten population” decides to beat the odds and instead of putting hope into a broken system invest their hopes in each other, using the pains of their past to be the fuel that drives them to create a better tomorrow. Camp Second Chance is an encampment founded by the homeless to foster an environment that allows them to become productive people in society. “Stories of Us” is their story and ours, one of triumph, showing us that the power lies within our own willpower not to just survive but to thrive.
“Stories of Us” was awarded the Turner Legacy Award by Meaningful Movies Project in 2020 and the Audience Choice Award at the Tacoma Film Festival.
Film Description for Razing Liberty Square:
Three contemporary issues – climate change, housing insecurity, and economic inequity – become a unifying force driving redevelopment in Liberty City, Miami. Until recently, it was home to the oldest segregated public housing project in the United States, Liberty Square. Now, it is ground zero for a burgeoning trend: climate gentrification. Eight miles inland of Miami’s beaches, Liberty City residents fight to save their community from climate gentrification: their land, sitting on a ridge, becomes real estate gold.