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  • you're about to see a clip from a documentary that was made before my time.

  • I'm David Hoffman filmmaker, and I collect these because, well, they mean something to me.

  • The people who made this film with some of the best at the time pay.

  • Lauren's Aaron Copland Did the music well, a Vandyke.

  • These were great documentary filmmakers.

  • The film has a purpose.

  • It's trying to show you what life was like before modern cities, trying to convince you that this community that existed could exist in the city if we chose to do it that way, see what you think.

  • A century or two ago, we built our church and mark the common.

  • We raised the town hall next so we could have our say about the taxes, whether we need another teacher with school.

  • When town meeting comes around, we know our rights and duties.

  • No harm.

  • If we disagree in all that matters, we neighbors pulled together.

  • We work from sun to dark if you call, just work a job that helps make a body feel at peace while doing or I'm a bit with pleasure.

  • When it's done, art isn't something foreign.

  • We look at the showcase.

  • It's in the blankets that we've spun and woven right at home.

  • It's in the patchwork quilt sewn by our daughters at a quilting bee for someone's bridal chest.

  • It's in the locks and hinges that the blacksmith shapes.

  • It's in the baskets that are woven in the neighborhood to fit our household needs for marketing.

  • Commending when water wheels are better fitted to do the work of human hands, we rig up the machines to solve the wood or grind the corn for harmony, grits and Johnny Cake.

  • A while ago, that corn was on the stock above the pumpkins, right hand yellow.

  • One night, the neighbors met to shell the years together.

  • They did the job in no time so they could clear the old barn floor and choose their favorite partners.

  • For the dancers, it was lasting harmony between the soil and what we build her planted there.

  • We used our hands and master what we laid our hands on.

  • Working and living.

  • We found a balance.

  • The tongue was us.

  • We were part of it.

  • We never let our cities grow too big for us to manage.

  • We never pushed the open land, too far away.

  • We youngsters took it in the playing field mill daily chores were teachers, the old ones at good years of family life, our own our Children mellow years before the Wright brute belle as fruit will drop or windless Autumn day.

  • But that was peace.

  • Seed was ready for the earth again.

  • Ready to die, ready once more to grow.

  • Americans realize that slums like these can no longer exist where 10 million of our people still live in squalor and darkness, where future citizen to grow up without sunlight and fresh air and space to play.

  • 40% of American homes are still without modern plumbing.

  • 20% are without gas or electricity.

  • 1/3 of the citizens of the richest nation in the world is ill housed.

  • But already slums in some metropolitan centers are coming down, condemned by forward looking civic governments.

  • Down, they're coming.

  • The cold water, no light tenements down are coming.

  • The bad living conditions that produce bad citizens, the underprivileged families from the dark areas of our cities are being moved into the sunlit tree surrounded clean apartments of gigantic housing projects produced by city planners as investments in democracy cities within cities scientifically planned and built, where a man and his family with a small income can live with comfort and dignity, whether or playgrounds in space for the kids to stretch their growing limbs right outside the front door, where shops and stores are a planned part of the city within the city.

  • Everything from the corner drugstore to the local movie theater.

  • Even an automatic laundry where Junior waits outside while mom finds the family wash can be done in five minutes for 1/4.

  • Such a housing project is this is the result of planning planning so that any five year old can scamper to his heart's content without fear of city traffic planning, so that the rate of disease goes down and the rate of happiness and health goes up.

  • Houses such as these were assembly line made, proving the theory of many a planner that the assembly line principle, which results in low cost and great quantity, and everything from tooth brushes to liberty ships can be applied to the building trades as well as other industries.

  • The difference in cost between such a prefabricated houses you see here and a custom built house is the same as the difference between an assembly line built car and one built to one individual specifications.

  • Prefabricated houses are one way too low cost living on, ah, high standard level mass produced houses, build and borders.

  • You would buy a car, worry the city or country way of life.

  • So what happened?

  • Tens of millions of people move to the suburbs.

  • I lived in one Levittown, Long Island.

  • If you were a G I no money down and you could buy a home for $33 a month.

  • If you're not a G, I think it was 6000 bucks down refrigerator, beautiful bedroom, a driveway, a carport, trees, a little bit of land so much more.

  • The suburbs were amazing, and this film gives a little bit of sense off how so many people desired to move to them.

  • My parents spent three days on the line camping out in order to buy 11 house, and that's where I grew up.

  • I can remember somebody coming up the street, a truck coming up the street and kicking off refrigerators, dropping them one index another.

  • I could remember a giant machine drilling holes in the ground and another truck coming along and plopping trees in.

  • We grew up with mud everywhere.

  • These had been potato fields, and all of a sudden there were tens of thousands of homes on curved streets.

  • Who streets is to be straight, right?

  • Well, this was a curved street.

  • That's kind of classy.

  • In a way.

  • You went around a corner baseball fields for the kids to play shopping center nearby.

  • Uh, a pool in Levittown.

  • There was a pool for every group.

  • There were some disadvantages, which is us.

  • Kids were rebellious.

  • So many of us were rebellious.

  • Elvis President was coming up at the same time and so much more.

  • If you watched my clips, you know, I'm presenting different experiences that people had at that time white people back, people middle class, rural urban.

  • I'm going to talk more about that and the different reactions I'm getting from you, my viewers to these old statements and these old clips in future movies that I make.

you're about to see a clip from a documentary that was made before my time.

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