Walking Cinema: Museum of the Hidden City

FAIN: MN-290219-23

Center for Independent Documentary, Inc. (Newton, MA 02458-1341)
Michael Abraham Epstein (Project Director: June 2022 to present)

A website and mobile application with walking tours exploring the history of affordable housing in San Francisco.

WALKING CINEMA: MUSEUM OF THE HIDDEN CITY (MHC) is a mobile application and walking tour exploring San Francisco’s history of affordable housing. Due to its unique mix of preservationist and progressive policies, San Francisco’s affordable housing stock spans a range of eras: from Depression Era minimalist housing blocks, to inclusionary housing in expensive new glass towers, to the largest concentration of Single Room Occupancy hotels left in the United States. The project will use this architecture and its surrounding neighborhoods as stages to show how the history of affordable housing informs present and future efforts to create shelter for all the city’s residents. Amidst numerous cranes, ubiquitous upscaling, and notorious evictions, MHC will reveal a saga of unintended consequences for a project that may just be getting its footing in one of the most expensive cities in the country.