Brooklyn’s Brownsville subject of film screening, panel

June 5, 2012 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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Film based on infamous St. Louis public housing project

FORT GREENE — The Municipal Art Society of New York (MAS), in partnership with Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, will sponsor a movie screening and discussion about a film on the challenges of urban housing on Monday, June 11, BAM Rose Cinemas in Fort Greene.

BAMcinématek, the repertory film program at BAM, and the Brownsville Partnership, are also partners in presenting the film, called “The Pruitt-Igoe Myth,” whose focus is on Brownsville “as seen through the lens of St. Louis’ infamous Pruitt-Igoe housing development.”

Scheduled from 6:30 to 9 p.m., “The Pruitt-Igoe Myth” depicts the transformation of the American city in the decades after World War II as experienced by the residents who called Pruitt-Igoe home until its demolition in the 1970s.

“There is perhaps no New York neighborhood in which the movie’s themes — the changing city, the investment needs in the operation and maintenance of public housing, the need for diverse housing options and economic opportunities, the intense attachment people have to their own communities, and their desire to make them better — hit closer to home than in Brownsville,” according to a description.

The evening’s panelists will include Chad Freidrichs, director of the film; Richard Baron, co-founder and CEO of McCormack Baron Salazar, a leading for-profit developer of economically-integrated urban neighborhoods; and Joseph Heathcott, associate professor of urban studies at The New School.

Gerald Thomas, managing director of the Brownsville Partnership, will serve as moderator.

The BAM Rose Cinemas are at 30 Lafayette Ave.

For more information visit www.MAS.org.