The 1968/2018 Cities on the Edge Film Series presents

Between the Word and the Deed... (1971)

What was the Model Cities program and why have so few people heard about it? Join architect and historian Susanne Schindler as she explains the origins, trajectory and legacies of the Great Society program launched in 1966. Model Cities’ goal was to improve the quality of life in the nation’s most impoverished urban areas by coordinating federal funding and community participation.

In 1968, filmmaker Gordon Hyatt was commissioned by New York's Model Cities Administration to document the community process in the city's three Model Cities Neighborhoods–Central Brooklyn, the South Bronx, and Harlem-East Harlem. The film chronicles the often contentious negotiations both at the neighborhood level and between residents and city planning agencies. By the time the film was delivered in 1970, enthusiasm for the program had waned, in part due to the slow process of tangible deliverables. The film was never shown, and in 1974, Model Cities was terminated.

The screening of Between The Word And The Deed… will be introduced by Susanne Schindler and followed by a discussion with Gordon Hyatt and Purcell Carson, documentary film specialist at Princeton.

This event is sponsored by the Princeton Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism and The Humanities Council's 1968/2018: Cities on the Edge series.