Crosby Street

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Directed by Jody Saslow

Crosby Street is an affectionate cinematic portrait of a typical street in New York City’s Soho district during the dawn of its emergence. The film presents average people in the context of ordinary circumstances, offering the opportunity to experience a microcosm of urban life rarely examined: the anonymous, rather than the celebrated.

On Crosby Street we feel the pulse of the city through the people whose lives unfold here. We learn how societal shifts have forced changes in this 100 year-old industrial neighborhood. Workers express their feelings freely regarding their livelihoods that bring them here. Pioneering residents, and transients from the nearby Bowery, offer insights into the various moods and attractions of the street.

The film, made at a time when New York City was on the brink of bankruptcy, is an artifact of a Manhattan that was still a home to manufacturing, when the homeless were “Bowery Bums”, and hand-drawn wooden carts were still used for hauling. There is barely a hint of the emerging phenomenon of gentrification that would eventually make the street’s Soho neighborhood internationally renowned.

1975, 16mm, color, 18 min.

Mannheim International Film Festival Melbourne International Film Festival Vienna Film Haus
Polish Television Network
Showtime Television
New York Museum of Modern Art Robert Flaherty Film Seminar

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