"Once a city becomes unaffordable, it cannot go back"
- Christopher Jordan, Co-Director of Fab 5 - Tacoma, WA
The iMPACT LENS Experience
2021: HILLTOPIA
There’s No Place Like HILLTOPIA
combatting gentrification, displacement and erasure in Hilltop
iMPACT LENS presents HILLTOPIA; a cinematic journey through a once predominantly Black neighborhood called Hilltop in Tacoma, WA located on the stolen ancestral lands of the Puyallup people and Coast Salish Territories.
Through an impact lens, we recognize that although development is necessary for communities to evolve, the gentrification that often happens as a result threatens the wellbeing and cultural legacies of this diverse Pacific Northwest community through rapid-displacement leading to chronic housing and food insecurity, racist over policing, and the systematic erasure of Black people, businesses and culture.
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Hilltop’s reputation for being plagued by gang violence, addiction, and poverty has made the neighborhood vulnerable to gentrification for decades. Through trauma informed filmmaking, in partnership with local BIPoC residents, we bear witness to a community reclaiming agency over its origin story and the legacy of cultural resilience and resistance to oppression Hillopians leave to future generations.
Funded in part by Tacoma Creates
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