This 62nd New York Film Festival Special Event will feature a conversation with director Stanley Nelson, producer Rita Coburn, former San Juan Hill resident Deborah Gray White, and historian Virginia Sánchez Korrol following the screening.

In the first half of the 20th century, the area now called Lincoln Square was known by another name: San Juan Hill. Musical phenomena like bebop and the Charleston were created there; its clubs and theaters nurtured creative geniuses like James P. Johnson, Josephine Baker, and Thelonious Monk; and artist spaces like the Lincoln Square Arcade counted luminaries like Eugene O’Neill, George Bellows, and Robert Henri among their inhabitants. Home to a largely working-class community, San Juan Hill was redlined in the 1930s and targeted by “urban renewal” in the 1940s and 1950s, when thousands of residents were displaced to make way for Amsterdam Houses, Lincoln Center, Fordham University, and other modern developments. Through never-before-accessed records and archives, historical footage, expert commentary, and interviews with residents, San Juan Hill: Manhattan’s Lost Neighborhood traces the neighborhood’s rise and fall and explores the vibrant people, arts, and culture whose enduring legacy still resonates today.