Broad St. Bank Hosts Flick During Trenton Film Fest
From www.trentonian.com:
By Sulaiman Abdur-Rahman
TRENTON — The city’s vision to revitalize downtown Trenton began with the renovation of the historic Broad Street Bank. As such, it was only natural for the residential high-rise to host the “Central Terminal” documentary yesterday for Day 2 of the Trenton Film Festival.
The film’s producers, Scott Richardson and Kirsten A. Jahn, were in town to debut the documentary here, which they completed about a year ago as Canisius College Video Institute students in western New York.
“Central Terminal” is a 29-minute film about a train station in Buffalo, N.Y., that was a thriving hub in the 1920s which closed down in the 1970s.
Then the Central Terminal, much like the Broad Street Bank, underwent decades of blight and deterioration until area residents intervened in an effort to save it from destruction.
“I think it’s a nice fit that a building like the Broad Street Bank — that has been renovated — is the host of a film about a building in Buffalo, N.Y., that everyone is hoping to be renovated some day,” said Dr. Barbara Irwin, who mentored Richardson and Jahn as director of the Canisius College Video Institute.
Production of the film began shortly after Jahn contacted the Central Terminal Restoration Corp. in 2006 to see if they’d be interested in having a documentary made on their efforts to save and renovate the terminal.
But filming during the brutal winter months was challenging to the filmmaking duo.
“It was really cold. That was the major problem,” Jahn said yesterday following the documentary’s screening to more than 20 attendees.
“The terminal building is not heated,” Richardson told The Trentonian yesterday. “We were shooting in February and March. The president of the Central Terminal Restoration Corp., we shot his interview at the terminal in the middle of March, and we were freezing.”
Marilyn Campbell, a fourth-time volunteer with the film festival, said the event is always a blast. “They’re great films,” she said. “It’s really nice to see films that aren’t the usual movie theater films.”
David Henderson, president of the Trenton Film Festival, said he was happy to have the opportunity to showcase the “Central Terminal” documentary in the Broad Street Bank. And he noted the film festival is going to be even bigger as it concludes tonight with a showing of “The Flyboys” at the Masonic Temple on 100 Barrack St. following the 7 p.m. awards ceremony.
“Trenton is the center of the international film world for one weekend,” Henderson said.
And for the two Canisius students, they arrived in the city yesterday morning as participants in Trenton’s fifth annual film festival.
After months of research and filming, Richardson and Jahn said they started to get emotionally involved in the restoration effort of the Central Terminal.
“We got very connected,” Richardson said. “The group that is working to restore the building is very tight-knit. We actually ended up in their Dingus Day parade,” he said, referring to the Polish holiday.
“It’s a big Polish neighborhood around there. They ended up putting us on a float in the back of the Dingus Day parade, so we became pretty connected,” Richardson added.
“I had never actually been inside the building before we started working on the film, and by the end of it I was ‘farrah, save the terminal.’”
The Trenton Film Festival always brings in creative artists like Richardson and Jahn to showcase independent motion pictures.
“I think it’s a great opportunity for our students to have their work shown at a venue like this,” Dr. Irwin said.
