- [Narrator] Major funding for this program was provided by... (gentle music) - Welcome to "Movers & Makers".

I'm your host Anne Ishii.

At "Movers & Makers", we have the unique opportunity to shine a light on the amazing cultural producers who work right in our backyard.

We're proud to bring you this week's episode featuring a few of our Emmy award-winning stories (upbeat music) - In 1918, the place was founded by immigrants that came from a small town called Vasto in the region of Abruzzo in Southern Italy.

They didn't have a penny in their pocket.

They didn't speak the language.

And so they built this club, the society to help them become Americans, it was a a meeting place for them to gather and talk about politics, talk about how they could get jobs here.

And that's how it really started.

They would come and they would eat.

They would have some drinks at the bar and just get together and create a community here in South Philadelphia.

(piano music playing) - When Italians first came to America they were not necessarily a wholeheartedly embraced community.

Both in America and in Italy, there was a lot of discrimination against Southern Italians, dark skinned, et cetera.

You had a lot of cases where fathers went over first and then kids and wives followed.

But many people who came here, it was a strange place.

(guitar music playing) When you come into a strange place, what do you look for first?

You want to kinda reconnect and reestablish what is familiar and what's comforting to you.

And for many of these people that came over from Southern Italy, it was food, It was connection to family and friends and people from not only their country, not only their region, but their small town.

which is how something Palizzi Social Club came to be and its earliest iteration.

In order to be a member here you had to be from this one small town by the sea.

And that's kinda how these people rebuilt their connections in a foreign world.

- In 1918, it was certified.

The charter is actually right behind me on the wall with all the names of the gentleman that came over.

And it was a men's only club at first.

If there is an illness in the family or a funeral or some kinda special occasion the dues that they would pay each month, would help pay for a funeral or unseen costs that they would need to take care of their families.

This was kinda a building block to help them stabilize in American culture.

Food was always an integral part of this place.

And in my culture, it's everything.

That's part of Italian culture is to work hard and then also enjoy life.

Some of the photos that are on the walls of them having big meals here, they took it so seriously.

There's so many documents that I have books and ledgers and hours of meetings of what they talking about but there was always food involved and always an atmosphere of togetherness.

It was really meant for men from the town of Vasto.

And as immigration grew and more Italians came to the United States, they expanded it.

And when I took over three years ago, I made it a little more inclusive for all people to be able to come and experience what I experienced as a child.

So I feel like that's my legacy and that's what I contributed to this society.

(guitar music playing) - Where is your membership please?

(guitar music playing) - What is so commendable about Joey and this place is he doesn't see it like a restaurant or like a business.

For him is like the steward of this living "Relic" of South Philly.

It speaks to him as who he is as a chef and a guy.

But I think it's just so important for us to be able to have something well preserved from the old neighborhood, so to speak but also something that everybody, if you remember no matter where you come from or who you are whether you're Italian or not Italian, you can partake in this and participate and kinda get a little glimpse of like what this part of South Philly was all about for quite a long time.

(guitar music playing) - The book came about one day when I was going through all of the old ledgers and meeting minutes and they had books.

I mean about this thick starting from like 1918, all the way up to probably 1995 of just stories and what they did my uncle made crop up over here.

So there's so much history and I thought won't it be good to honor these guys in a way to make my own ledger.

So a lot of the recipes that are in the book are old family recipes for my grandparents, my uncle who recently passed.

The spaghetti crab it's an Italian and American staple.

So those were the things that I really wanted to get across.

I got a book here.

- All right.

I hand chose Adam Erace for the specific reason that we're both from South Philadelphia and we're both Italian-Americans.

And I really felt like Adam would have a real understanding and a real grasp of the experience of Palizzi club because he lived it as well.

- This represents so much aware who we are, where we come from.

- Yeah.

- We have a little map on where we get our Mozzarella cheese and where we get our bread.

And there's a whole slew of different elements to the book which I really love.

- When Joey and I started talking about it, we knew it would be a cookbook with amazing recipes but to have just recipes and not present them in the context of what that means both in Palizzi Social Club and in the Italian American community in South Philly, it wouldn't make sense.

It would be a half-done book.

- It's really important for me to represent my community and my culture as best I can.

That's what we did in writing this book.

I walk in every day, I look at the photos and I think to myself, this is why I do what I do here.

I'm almost like a curator of this place because there's so much history.

And I do what I do for those guys in those photos.

(upbeat music) - Bravo, Bravo, thank you.

(upbeat music) (violin music playing) - When I was about 10 or 11 years old I saw a marionette hanging in a store and it intrigued me.

So I went home and made my first marionette and I enjoyed that quite a bit.

It wasn't a good Marionette, but every once in a while just by accident, it would move just right.

And in that moment, it seemed like it was alive to me.

I didn't start out thinking I was going to be a puppeteer but it just kind of took over my life.

And I went with it.

I got serious about it in my early twenties and I was doing it for fun.

It's a hobby, I guess you could say.

But then more and more people started asking to see the marionette.

And the next thing, I was very busy with it.

I studied fine arts in school.

I thought I was gonna be a painter.

I still do some painting and some drawing.

and I took sculpture.

And marionette making, actually involves all the arts.

All the ideas for the marionette come from observation are just things that happen in daily life.

If I see something that I think would make a good marionette piece, I will make little drawings of who I think the character is.

This is a marionette working in marionette, who is also working in marionette.

So we have three levels of scale here but I think that interaction could be a lot of fun and I think technically it's possible to do this.

I'm gonna find out.

I do a lot of research.

I do a lot of observation.

For instance, when I was making the horse marionette, I went and I looked at horses in the field and made a lot of drawings of horses.

I went down to the Smithsonian institution and they had a skeleton of a horse and I drew that.

(upbeat music) In my life, I've probably made over 150 marionettes.

The earlier marionettes were much simpler kind of marionettes than the ones I'm making now.

Now I'm trying to get marionettes to do very specific movements.

And the overall thing is they must look like they're alive.

That's what I'm shooting for.

I found this piece of fabric and I just kind of fell in love with it 'cause I think it's almost a puppet already.

Maybe I'll add a hand or something, but it's almost alive, just the way it moves.

I like the color of it.

It's very expressive.

If you can work materials that already have a liveliness to 'em, it really helps the Marionette become alive.

I'm sculpting a head for that puppet who's going to be working a puppet who's working a puppet.

I usually don't want to make things perfectly symmetrical because the beauty of not being symmetrical is you can show the audience different sides of the face and the public can appear to be changing its expression without actually doing so.

They seem to be more alive that way.

When I originally started making marionettes I used a standard what's called an airplane control.

Couple of cross sticks with a separate bar for the leg bar but I quickly found out that I couldn't get everything I wanted out of the marionette using that kind of control.

So I just started to improvise.

The design of the control is a big adventure because I don't know when I'm starting exactly how that's going to go.

So it's an organic process of problem solving.

I compare the manipulation of the marionette, it's like playing a musical instrument.

There has to be muscle memory involved.

This is Raul, he's the oldest marionette that I still work with.

I made him in the very early seventies and he also has one of the simpler controls.

The weight of the Puppet's body from the neck down is carried by these two shoulder strings.

The weight of his head is carried separately by one string on either side of his head, just above his ear here.

They come up here and they're tied on the ends of this horizontal bar.

So if I want him to turn his head if I want him to look in that direction all I have to do is tilt this bar this way.

If I want him to look the other way, I'll just tilt that bar the other way.

He has a string on the end of his nose.

If I want him to look up, I can pull that string and he looks up.

If I want him to look down I'm going to hold those shoulder strings I was telling you about with my little finger and lower the head bar in relation to it and he looks down.

To get the puppet to walk, I've tied the string just above his knee.

This puppet is also equipped with a string that draws his hands together.

So when he makes his entrance, he is in this attitude.

All the themes in my show are universal.

They express things that everybody's familiar with.

People have a tendency to wanna feel what the marionette is feeling.

If it's well done, it can express pathos very powerfully in a way that he human actor cannot because somewhere in your brain, when you're watching a human actor you know this guy's pretending.

Whereas in marionette there's a purity about it.

This is all they are, is what you're seeing.

There's dance, there's choreography, there's lighting, there's design, the costuming, painting, sculpture, putting it all together in a show.

I just feel very fortunate to have been able to perform in different parts of the world.

For more than 30 years, the audiences have been great.

It can be very powerful and can be very satisfying.

(upbeat music) I can't take credit myself.

I give all the credit to the marionettes.

I don't feel like they come from me, they come to me.

(soft upbeat music) (bright upbeat music) (guitar music playing) ♪If a custom tailored vet ♪ ♪ Asks me out for something wet ♪ ♪ When the vet begins to pet, I cry, "Hooray!"

♪ ♪ But I'm always true to you, darling, in my fashion.

♪ ♪ Yes.

I'm always true to you, darling, in my way.

♪ ♪ Mister Harris Plutocrat ♪ ♪ Want to give my cheek a pat ♪ - Morning?

- It'll hold a zipper, it'll stretch well.

- A Little bit.

- No I don't need it.

- Yeah.

(indistinct) I just wanted to have a little gift.

1 61 19.

Alrighty.

People do not realize how much they deal with fabric all the time.

I'm Kate Gaffney Lange and I'm the heir apparent of Gaffney fabrics, a retail store here in the Germantown section of Philadelphia.

(guitar music playing) I call it the most democratic place to shop in Philadelphia.

You can be standing with a designer or a mom with a baby or a Muslim sister or a Mennonite who's visiting from Lancaster.

There's a woman who comes up from Baltimore weekly to see what we've gotten new.

It's not just a fashion store and it's not just a quilting store and it's not just an upholstery store.

It's all of those things.

That's what makes us different from everybody else.

We might not have every piece of high-end fabric, I will send them down to Port Street.

We know who we are and we don't try to be anybody else.

- That is not as durable.

I am Velma Lee and I am a clothing designer.

So they just had something for the Grammy's.

Yep.

I had something on the Tony's.

It was wonderful.

And right now I have a patent pending for something.

So I would like Kate and her staff to help me find the right fabric so that I can take it to the factory and make prototype.

Maybe, can we look at the garment- - Yeah.

- just to see?

- Yeah.

We can do these two.

- I couldn't find anybody to make things the way I wanted them.

When I decided to cover, I like to be popping.

(chuckling) I have a boutique, my boutique is close to Brave, Summerville.

It's called The Boutique.

Everything that I make come straight from the heart to make sure that you feel great covered modestly.

- You know the girls don't like a lot of glitter that comes off because it gets on their clients.

I'm Eve Freeman and I make exotic dance wear.

Lovely, lovely, lovely.

I have to have it.

I come to Daffney's maybe about twice a week.

Hi.

How are you?

- I'm good.

Aren't they fine?

- They basically know what I'm looking for.

Sometimes they put things away for me.

I've seen the trend of different types of fabrics and some of 'em want feathers.

They want all the bullying that you can possibly find and that's about it.

- You guys need help.

- Hey, these are the coffee guys.

How are you?

- Good.

You need vinyl?

- Yes.

- I mean you tell us.

Yes.

- My favorite part of my job is solving the customer's problems.

Is this for upstairs?

Or where are they tearing?

- Downstairs.

- Well, they were upstairs.

Yeah.

- Our customers have to get in their car.

- Okay.

They have to drive here.

They come through the door, they have a problem and you have to figure out what it is.

That is for me, a great challenge.

(hinges creaking) Oh, that's a good one.

I feel like there are two route that consumers are taking.

One is faster, faster, faster, Amazon, get it in here today or tomorrow or there's the I wanna connect to my community and I feel like we stand strongly on the ladder.

Buying fabric online is not the same as touching and feeling and being comfortable with what you're buying.

(piano music playing) What year is this?

- 19... - Oh here 73.

- 1973.

- And here khakis, chinos, gabs at $99.

That's still the price.

- Right?

We wouldn't be around if it hadn't been for the hard work of my parents.

(upbeat music) They've given it 50 years.

That is a long time.

- When you own your own business, you cannot fool yourself.

You know when it's good.

And you know when it's bad.

I am Joe Gaffney.

I am the owner of Gaffney fabrics.

- I'm Lenore Gaffney and I was head notions buyer of Gaffney fabrics.

- My name is Julia Lange and I am the granddaughter of the people who run Gaffney fabrics.

(all chuckles) - I was young, I was energetic.

It was just a product.

I enjoyed the hailing of the goods.

I enjoyed the people, I enjoyed servicing.

I just enjoyed everything about retail.

It just happened to be fabrics.

could have been... - Nuts and bolts.

- Could have been a Harbor store.

- It takes so long to grow the business.

And the fact that Kate is so capable and willing to keep it going, is very satisfying.

- The question has been asked before where else would we be in the city?

And I can't think of another neighborhood as supportive of this business as Germantown has been - One, two, three.

(upbeat music) - And I would say, thank you to all the employees.

You've ever come through Gaffney's and all the customers who've ever come through Gaffney's.

(guitar music playing) You make it worth us being here and being of this community.

(piano music playing) (bright upbeat music) - This is one of my favorite images of my son, Marcus.

He loves basketball, West Philadelphia born and raised, on the playgrounds.

So he spent most of his days and all of that and just speak.

So we work out a lot.

We used to work out before COVID, we used to work out a lot but yeah I just love this image of him.

(upbeat music) My name is Ken McFarlane.

I'm a artist and activist based in West Philadelphia (car engine roaring) The root to the fruit, Portraits of Black Fathers and Their Children is a project that I started working on about five years ago.

I saw a young man walking with his daughter as I was driving and it spoke to me in a way that made me park my car, run over to him and ask for a portrait.

There was a conversation that came out of that interaction that sparked a need to create a larger body of work.

There's a common notion, but from I leave my house in the morning time until I come back in the evening, I see fathers interacting on different levels with their children.

So there's a narrative, but I know a counter narrative.

And he was proof and evidence of that counter narrative.

(upbeat music) Having my work at the Barnes was a wonderful experience and I can take very little credit for it.

The community carried me there.

It's probably the sweetest thing that I've ever experienced as a artist because it wasn't me trying to push the work.

It was the community demanding that the work be seen and the conversation be held ♪ Almost heaven ♪ ♪ West Jamaica ♪ ♪ Sure is the mountain shinning by the river.

♪ - My father was a photographer many, many years ago in Jamaica.

I grew up hearing people tell me that that my father made the first picture that they ever had of themselves.

And I certainly didn't understand that as a child.

I certainly didn't attach a great value to it.

But over time, when I look back I realized those were the seeds that were planted early and they took time to bloom.

♪ Take me home, country roads ♪ Being community-based and community-driven.

All of these photographs, I have a responsibility to how they are presented and I'm in the community.

So if I do something that they don't like I'm gonna hear about it over and over again.

And you know, for the most part my name is good in these streets.

(bright pop music) So all of my projects begin quite organically.

(bright pop music) So 52nd Street has a historical record in Philadelphia.

It was once called the Golden Strip.

A collection of black businesses from the North to the South.

Has a great history that many of the elders know but a lot of the younger people don't know.

One time I was photographing a person by a bus stop a crowd gathered, and I could feel someone's eyes on me.

When I turned around to meet the eyes, someone said, "Who are you?

What are you taking pictures for?

Who you taking pictures for?"

And it was a barrage of questions but I just took the last one, which was, "Who you taking pictures for?"

And I said, brother, I'm taking pictures for you.

He said, "What are you talking about?

You don't know me."

(upbeat music) I said, brother do you remember what 52nd Street was 10 years ago?

15 years ago?

Yeah.

I said do you remember when the elders talk about the Golden Strip?

When there were black businesses from one side of 52nd Street to the other side?

He was like, "Yeah."

And I said to him, I said, well, you mess around and your children or your grandchildren might not believe that black people ever lived on 52nd Street.

And he took it in.

And then he asked me to make his picture.

(upbeat music) I understand that I am part of a continuum, of black image makers, taking control of our own image.

I understand that photography became popular in 1839 with a Daguerreotype.

And I know that black photographers were making images from 1840.

I also know that, from the beginning of the medium, the black image was devalued.

(upbeat music) You know, the time old tale of the hunter and the lion when the hunter tells the story, doesn't sound like how it sounds when the lion tells the story.

So we are lions and we're gonna tell our story and we're tell our truth.

And we're not waiting for anyone to lift us up and tell our own stories because we can do it ourselves.

♪ And mother my momma, momma ♪ ♪ When you get to go home ♪ ♪ Country home ♪ - We hope you've enjoyed today's Emmy special.

To catch up on all four seasons of "Movers & Makers".

Check us out on YouTube.

I'm Anne Ishii.

See you next time.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Major funding for this program was provided by,