Terrain Vague, 2020 16mm to HD, Black & White and Color
Terrain Vague (working title) is a 16mm photo-roman, based on the images and accompanying log of a fictional female researcher who, over the summer of 2016, chronicles the development of a new private, university-based innovation center from the shell of a former color and coatings laboratory in a poor and working class Southwest Philadelphia neighborhood--an industrial hub that shuttered in the wake of the crisis of 2008.
In her investigations into the history of the site and its environs, her peregrinations around the city (including a stop at the fateful 2016 Democratic National Convention), and her interactions with a beleaguered real estate agent, the researcher reflects on the cycles of creative destruction that permanently transform the urban landscape, providing openings for new schemes and entrepreneurial science fictions of development.
Official Selection Ji.Hlava International Documentary Film Festival 2020