Some would say that “Delivered Vacant,” the 1992 documentary film chronicling eight years of real estate-related battles between Hoboken’s old-timers, newcomers, politicos and would-be developers, has a story line as rich and textured as a 19th century novel. But that alone does not explain why there probably will be a standing room only crowd on hand Tuesday night to watch a re-screening of the movie at the Shannon Lounge with the film’s director, Nora Jacobson. In addition to providing entertainment, the film also provides a thorough look at one of the most talked about aspects of city life: development – or what some might call overdevelopment. While some of the issues relating to development have changed since Jacobson’s cameras began rolling in 1984 – for example, mysterious fires no longer rage through apartment buildings ripe for renovation – many of the characters featured in the film are still active in public life. Mayor Anthony Russo and City Councilman Dave Roberts, two of the most forceful voices in the debate over the future of the city’s development now, were in the infancy of their political careers at the time. Also featured are the one-of-a-kind, bullhorn-waving former mayor Tom Vezetti, developers Daniel Gans and George Vallone (who are currently developing the Maxwell House property), and a host of native Hobokenites from a range of ethnic backgrounds who were squeezed out of their apartment buildings in a variety of ways. Jacobson, a former Hobokenite who ironically was thrown out of her apartment in 1996 due to contamination, is attending the screening because she hopes to raise the money necessary to edit an additional two-hour tape from about 15 hours of unused “Delivered Vacant” footage. Tickets are $10. “I have a ton of footage that did not make it to the final cut,” said Jacobson this week from her home in Vermont. “Originally, I thought there was going to be a whole section on the waterfront, so I have footage that goes back to 1981 from City Council meetings and interviews on that. I also have footage from other aspects of city life like Italian feasts, a Puerto Rican sweet 16 birthday party, and an old man who kept pigeons in his house. The Hoboken Historical Museum asked me if I would be interested in putting the stuff together so it could be available to interested people from the library, so that is what I am going to do.” While Jacobson scrambles to try and make her work available to those who may be interested in the mile square city’s history, there are those in the city that believe that the issues her documentary touches on are still very pertinent. The old and the new “At the start of the film, there is a woman in Church Square Park who says, ‘there is a tension because you’ – meaning Nora – ‘are a newcomer,'” said local artist Doug Lindsay, who served as a sound man during the taping of the documentary. “I think that those issues between newcomers and old timers very much still exist. I’ve been here 15 years and still people think about me as a newcomer. There is still that tension whether you have been here five years 10 years or 15 years. Nora’s movie probes that issue.” In addition to Tuesday night’s showing, Jacobson will also show her most recent work, “My Mother’s Early Lovers,” a feature-length film, on Monday night at the Shannon Lounge. Jacobson co-wrote the 103-minute movie with Sybil Smith, another Vermont native, who authored the semi-autobiographical novella upon which the film is based. The story, which Jacobson says is meant to show the “inexplicable link between love and violence,” focuses on a young woman’s discoveries as she reads through her mother’s diaries and letters. At first blush, it seems that no two pictures could be more unalike. One is a documentary, the other pure theater. But Jacobson said that her interest in “My Mother’s Early Lovers” grew out of her experience working on “Delivered Vacant.” “By the time that I was finished editing Delivered Vacant, I became interested in how stories got told,” she explained. “I found myself getting very interested in dramatic structure. When you are following people’s lives for that period of time, you see changes take place. Once I was done with ‘Delivered Vacant’ I found taking fictional characters was just the logical next step.” Started with housing In fact, it was telling people’s stories that got Jacoboson interested in “Delivered Vacant” in the early 1980s. After graduating from an arts school in Chicago, she landed a job as a techie on a documentary that was taking a look at the “Model Cities Program” the federal government had initiated to revitalize historic urban areas. One of the places that Jacobson came to film was Hoboken, so when she decided to move to the New York City area in 1980, Hoboken was a natural choice. Soon after arriving in the mile-square city, she began doing short documentaries that chronicled city life. “I was documenting little aspects of the city,” Jacobson explained last week. “So I started to hang out at the homeless shelter, and that was in 1982. I was talking to people who were at the shelter about why they were there. They told me about the fires, and how their houses had been bought up and a lot of the homeless problem was because they could not afford to be there anymore. I started to think about my own role being in Hoboken – since I had just moved there – and it just interested me. That was the beginning of the city being very polarized.” Screenings are scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Monday night and 8 p.m. Tuesday night. To buy tickets call 217-4077.
Still delivering; Filmmaker to screen critically-acclaimed Hoboken documentary
