The Making of the Films

Filmmakers Mark Lipman and Leah Mahan began making Holding Ground, their first film about the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, in 1990. They had met while working on Eyes on the Prize, Henry Hampton’s acclaimed series about the history of the civil rights movement, and were deeply inspired by the transformation happening in the Dudley neighborhood.

Holding Ground aired on public television in 1997 and became a widely used resource in the community development field and in college classrooms. The documentary was chosen by the Rockefeller Foundation’s National Video Resources “Viewing Race Project” as one of the best independent films on the subjects of race and diversity and the Ford Foundation included Holding Ground in a 2005 study of its most successful documentary funding over the prior 25 years. After Hurricane Katrina, the Annie E. Casey Foundation commissioned a short version of the film as a resource for grantees on the Gulf Coast who were helping residents recover from the devastation.

The film also made its way to unexpected places like Siberia, where it was translated into Russian and used to educate citizens in 22 cities about the potential of a newly established nonprofit sector after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Another memorable story of the film’s international reach appeared in the Times of India, when Boston activist Mel King shared the film with homeless people in Mumbai who were organizing a human rights campaign for housing.

Ten years after the release of Holding Ground, Mark and Leah were drawn back to the Dudley neighborhood after learning that none of the 225 homes DSNI had built were in foreclosure at a time when the mortgage crisis was devastating communities across America. They also learned that several of the teen volunteers in Holding Ground had gone on to become leaders in DSNI and were running the organization. Leah and Mark had both moved to the West Coast, so they decided to work as the executive producers and invited Boston filmmaker Llewellyn Smith to produce and direct Gaining Ground. Llew has a long history in Roxbury, where he grew up, and had been a consulting producer on Holding Ground. Llew engaged his team of producers at Vital Pictures, including co-producer Kelly Thomson, who also helped edit the film.

When the filmmakers were preparing to begin shooting Gaining Ground, DSNI was anticipating the groundbreaking for a long-awaited community center. The vision for a community center was documented in Holding Ground through the story of the Young Architects Project, in which young Dudley residents worked with architects to build models based on their ideas. The realization of the center, and the challenging negotiations over its construction and management, provided a way to explore the complexities of building equitable partnerships for community-based change.