As I approached the end of my undergraduate career at the University of Pennsylvania, I sought to make a short film that touched on my experience, as well as that of my peers, of living on/around this campus and within the city of Philadelphia. But how does one do justice to representing the space around them and the place where they live? I do not see my four years here as having a linear narrative. Rather, the experience consists of a series of happenings and memories attached to clusters of places–places that I either visited once or frequented over the years. In embarking on this filmmaking journey, I revisited the sites of memory-making for both myself and some of the people who have experienced the city along with me.

What happens when you turn the camera to the space around you and make the place(s) you inhabit the subject? What does it reveal about the person behind the camera? What does it say about the people who pass through the frame? Stories in Place: Philadelphia is a short film interrogating how space and place interact with the experience of living somewhere and making memories. Concepts of space and place are taken on the surface as givens—we all acknowledge that we generally exist in space and more specifically inhabit places. Philosophers on phenomenology such as Edward S. Casey tackle these terms by taking a closer look at space and place and investigating what is at stake when we question these two concepts. Through my film, I wish to address these philosophical considerations by pairing sights and sounds from places around Philadelphia with anecdotes or close noticings attached to the spots. By including both my voice and those of people I have experienced this city with, the film highlights the collective experience of myself and other Penn students living both on this campus and within the city of Philadelphia. Everyone experiences certain places differently–they witness different happenings, meet different people–but these places hold the stories of all the people who interact with them. Whether people simply pass through once, or return often, they share in the history of that place.