What do Daysi Roman, 21, who grew up in the Ingersol public housing complex, and Angelo Cilia, 37, who hails from Kansas City, Missouri have in common?
Both are subjects of the Brooklyn Young Filmmakers Center (BYFC) latest project, dubbed the Fort Greene Information X-Change.
The project features local writers penning a cross section of “neighbor sketches” from the diverse Fort Greene area, which are then posted on a blog and distributed throughout the neighborhood.
“In gentrifying New York neighborhoods, like Fort Greene, long-time residents are struggling to survive as the price of living goes up when well-to-do newcomers move in next door,” explained BYFC Director Trayce Gardner.
“These groups may never interact with each other, and therefore never consider each other to be neighbors. The Neighbor Sketches project starts by answering the question, ‘Who are these strangers who live next to me?’” she added.
Roman, a NYU film school graduate who was born in the Dominican Republic and moved to the Ingersol Houses from Bushwick when she was 10, relates how it was when she first moved to the development.
“My mom wouldn’t let me go out. I couldn’t do anything. And everything looked the same. It was old, prison like. Like a graveyard. I felt afraid to even go outside. It just looked so sad here,” she says in her profile sketch.
Roman also relates how she seldom hangs out in her Fort Greene neighborhood, preferring to go to Manhattan or Park Slope.
Yet, she also gets the sense that her neighbors in Ingersol feel out of the loop to all the development going up around them.
“We don’t have any information on what’s really going on. We just know something’s coming. We know these big buildings going up are for people with lots of income,” says Roman in her sketch.
“It’s – what’s the word? – gentrification. When I was little here, there were not a lot of the people I’m seeing now. It’s kind of weird because it feels like they’re taking over the neighborhood, but slowly and quietly. So people don’t know what to think about what’s going on,” she adds.
Cilia, on the other hand, moved to South Elliot Place about four years ago, and loves all the restaurants and diversity of his new adopted neighborhood.
“In the suburbs [of Kansas City], we barely talked to our neighbors… There were no sidewalks – you drove everywhere. You basically are in your home or you go to your friends homes, but there is no street life,” Cilia explains in his sketch.
“Here it’s so different. People are friendly. People live close to each other and see each other over and over again on the street. There’s this man across the street I enjoy waving to every morning. We don’t really chat, but waving to each other is part of my morning,” he adds.
Gardner said that for now there will be sketch updates on the blog every Friday.
To view the Fort Greene Information X-Change blog, log onto (http://fginfox.blogspot.com.
For more information on the BFYC, log onto (www.wearebyfc.org) or call 935-0490.
