Customer Reviews

7th Street

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you haven't seen Josh Pais' 7th Street yet - do yourself a favor! This doc captures the transformation of one street in New York cities alphabet city from a drug infested, crime ridden area with charm and personality to a haven for yuppies and the nouveau riche. The process by which this is captured is personal to Pais and the story is laid out with integrity and heart felt care. This truly is a must see!

Josh Pais's 7TH STREET is a touching look at an area and a community that really had a distinct character to it. It evokes strong memories of a New York before the Gap and Starbucks, the New York of the 70's. This documentary is told in a very heartfelt way and is full of colorful characters. Absolutely worth repeat viewings. Saw it when it won the Audience Award at the 2003 Independent Film Festival of Boston.

This was a moving documentary, showing the people behind the faces you walk by everyday. As a New Yorker, it is meaningful to see the history of one of the cities' neighborhoods so beautifully and purely portrayed. Pais hides nothing, and shows the neighborhood's wrinkles, scars, and beauty.

This is one of the most beautiful documentaries I have seen in a long time. Josh Pais does a masterful job of making the viewer fall in love with the residents of the East Village--and then showing how they have been completely disenfranchised by the young and hip new inhabitatants. Characters like Merlin (the sweet homeless man who greets everyone as they walk down the street), Reno (the lover of Josh Pais's mother) and Mickey (the charming con just struggling to get by) hook you in to the film from the first scene.

But what is most impressive about 7th Street is that it shows how what has happened to this small neighborhood is happening all over New York City. Working class citizens are constantly being uprooted by real esate agents who are looking for the next hot neighborhood.

Josh Pais directed this movie with both skill and passion, and it turned out beautifully.

Josh Pais paints a vivid picture of his East Village neighborhood over the span of several decades. He chronicles not only the lives of some of the colorful charaters that make the block truly a community but also looks at his own experience as a child growing up in the "ghetto" and his feelings at the prospect of raising his own son in a place the police tried to quarantine from the rest of the city.

7th Street: 5 out of 10: Nostalgia about ones childhood is a dangerous thing. It permeates 7th street where Josh Pais is clearly to close to the subject as he bemoans the loss of the crime ridden hellhole of his youth and worries about the gentrification of said block. (There are outdoor café's now and people are drinking lattés oh the horror the horror)

That said it is a fascinating documentary with a great group of people (especially Reno Thunder who was his mothers occasional boyfriend.) In fact this is quite the high production home movie with many interviews with family who often counteract Mr. Pais's thesis about the neighborhood change and when Mr. Thunder falls on hard times the change is so dramatic there are clearly more forces at work then the neighborhood cleaning itself up.

I wish we had spent even more time with Mr. Thunder after the change and less on Mr. Pais's childhood (especially the endless footage of his late mother and how she was at the center of an art revolution. She actually comes across as kind of a ...how does one put this nicely... party girl.) Mr. Pais's brother in a hilarious and all to short clip reminisces on his reaction of finding Marcel Marceau in his living room one morning. He clearly doesn't hold the neighborhood (or mimes) to his heart and seemed glad to escape.

There is a staged and telling scene at the end where an adult Mr. Pais and his friend play in a fire hydrant while yuppies look on disapprovingly, his point is lost in the fact he does look quite silly. There are some things from childhood we just let go.

Josh Pais is a moderately talented filmmaker, and 7th Street shows some of the benefit of his experience in the industry. It's an interesting documentary, as far as it goes, but unfortunately that isn't very far.

Pais lived on 7th Street for a number of years, but not during the *critical period* of 1975-1990. So, he missed out on much of the critical action. He presents gentrification as a given, as background, as back story. But, he gives few insights into why gentrification took place and why it took hold. And that's not surprising.
The important "actors" in the gentrification drama wouldn't talk to him because
essentially he was an outsider. Manny Schwartzenberg, the central figure in the film, played Pais like a puppet, telling him exactly what he wanted to hear ...
but nothing, absolutely nothing of any importance.

In summary, as a film 7th Street is interesting. As social criticism it's a failure.

Even though this documentary has lots of interesting characters and the narration is good,
I didn't really remember it afterwards.
Pais direction is meager to his own trials and struggles.
I'm sure that if I was from his neighborhood I would feel something, but the glance this documentary provides isn't fufilling.