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    Street Movies! returns to Vernon Park this month

    By Maleka Fruean

    | Calendar

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    The long-running outdoor series will feature films at Germantown’s local library, rumba players at iMPeRFeCT gallery, and more.

    A view of last year’s Street Movies! showcase at Vernon Park. (Photo: GIH)

    Film comes alive outdoors this month in Vernon Park as Scribe Video Center brings its Street Movies! series to Germantown.

    Street Movies!, a free, family-friendly outdoor movie series featuring a lineup of independent short films and community partners throughout Philadelphia, has been running for more than 20 years. This year’s screenings have taken place in South Philly, from the Southeast Asian Market to Strawberry Mansion to Chinatown, and at multiple locations in between.

    Friends of Vernon Park (FOVP) and Germantown Info Hub (GIH) cohost the event. GIH’s Rasheed Z. Ajamu will emcee again, and Friends of Vernon Park is excited to welcome the outdoor films back to the park. 

    “I feel like the outdoor movies, period, allow people to enjoy the movie, but also the people… the community together. It’s like having everyone in your living room,” said Felicia Coward, nearby neighbor and FOVP treasurer. 

    The Germantown film lineup includes the short documentary “Gather(in) Memory: Archiving Hyperlocal History in Germantown” (USA / 2026 / 16 MIN), by director Hosaena Tilahun, a second-year PhD student in Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. 

    It covers the Hyperlocal Heritage series at Joseph E. Coleman Library, including art-making and local archiving events organized by librarians Molly Ward and Andrea Lemoins, as well as a memory circle organized by GIH.

    “I think especially as a person that’s entering Philadelphia, pretty new and in a limited capacity, currently as a student, I think it’s been such a beautiful way to learn about Philly, to respect its history. And when I say respect Philly’s history, it’s ultimately the stories and history of its people, especially Black Philadelphians,” Tilahun told us.

    Tilahun hopes to interview more artists and creatives in the coming year about library services and hyperlocal heritage.

    This month’s Germantown showcase also features Dir. Melissa Beatriz’s “Portraits of Philly Rumba: Imperfect Gallery” (USA / 2026 / 4 MIN), a short portrait series about African American and Latin American percussionists preserving rumba in the city.

    Also included are Dir. Gabriel Naghmouchi’s “Underneath The Concrete (Sous Le Béton)” (France / 2025 / 27 MIN), a short film about dance and memory in Parisian public spaces, and Dir. Saladin Whie II’s “Wholesome” (USA / 2025 / 18 min), a conceptual narrative-documentary about Black love as Cory learns new truths about his partner, Nyla.

    This year’s Street Movies! will be held on Thursday, August 20, 2026, starting at 7:30 p.m. Tickets and registration can be found here.

    Maleka Fruean is Germantown Info Hub’s community organizer, a writer, and mother of four, all raised in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia. She has a B.A. in journalism from Temple University and an M.F.A. in creative writing from St. Joseph’s University, and uses both to embrace the power of stories.