Watch 7th Street For Free

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Admirable film.

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

The jacket might have said "Josh Pais has made an extended home movie that focuses on Josh, his mom and dad, Josh, his wife, his son, Josh, some folks in the neighborhood, and Josh. If you enjoy the format of home movies - family values, family scenes, weepy sentimentality, minimal editing, zany characters, unfocused interviews and a self-important voice-over - this movie is a must-see."But the jacket said that this was a documentary about 7th Street near Alphabet City NYC .... "Sundance" .... "riveting" .... "compelling". etc.There's an NYC street guy in it. Many if not most NYC street characters have a good story. This guy has an amazing story really. But Josh just plows through so that the editing and camera-work leave you feeling "Uh, and?"There's a showdown with a dangerous drug dealer. We hear about it through a self-interview right after the event happened. This should have been chilling, frightening, intense. Instead it was flat and boring.Many NYC neighborhoods have incredible stories. This could have been one. It isn't. It's just a lot about Josh and his family and friends. The only thing missing is a scene of his son with a birthday cake and frosting smeared around.Josh played one of the turtles in "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles." That's probably a good fit for him.

7th Street: 5 out of 10: Nostalgia about ones childhood is a dangerous thing. It permeates 7th street where Josh Pais is clearly to close to the subject as he bemoans the loss of the crime ridden hellhole of his youth and worries about the gentrification of said block. (There are outdoor café's now and people are drinking lattés oh the horror the horror) That said it is a fascinating documentary with a great group of people (especially Reno Thunder who was his mothers occasional boyfriend.) In fact this is quite the high production home movie with many interviews with family who often counteract Mr. Pais's thesis about the neighborhood change and when Mr. Thunder falls on hard times the change is so dramatic there are clearly more forces at work then the neighborhood cleaning itself up. I wish we had spent even more time with Mr. Thunder after the change and less on Mr. Pais's childhood (especially the endless footage of his late mother and how she was at the center of an art revolution. She actually comes across as kind of a …how does one put this nicely… party girl.) Mr. Pais's brother in a hilarious and all to short clip reminisces on his reaction of finding Marcel Marceau in his living room one morning. He clearly doesn't hold the neighborhood (or mimes) to his heart and seemed glad to escape.There is a staged and telling scene at the end where an adult Mr. Pais and his friend play in a fire hydrant while yuppies look on disapprovingly, his point is lost in the fact he does look quite silly. There are some things from childhood we just let go.

I feel so blessed to have been watching the Sundance channel when this powerful, yet delicate film began. Josh Pais took us to his home on 7th street in New York, where his heart lives. Where he grew up. Where his love for the ever evolving society of that street just grew stronger throughout the years, even as the street and it's residents faced destruction from the drug peddlers and all that follows them. I'm not good at telling the story, but Josh's love for humanity and tradition embraces all of his friends on 7th street, and those of us fortunate enough to see his graceful film. Dignity. That is what he gave to the faces and voices of the people he filmed who he spoke with, ate with, quietly sat with, laughed and cried with, who lived there on 7th street, in apartments, or in brown boxes in the alley. It made no difference, they all became the family of 7th street, NYC, USA. Where he and his wife are raising their son. The colors of emotion and reality that this film travels will exhaust you, and energize you. Maybe even humanize you more...it did me.

I saw this on the Sundance channel and was incredibly impressed. This is a documentary of both Josh Pais's life, and the life of 7th Street, in Manhattan's Lower East Side. He interweaves his own life story with the history of 7th Street. Pais interviews old friends from 7th Street, and even if you don't know them, you grow to care deeply about them. Deeply. I was moved to tears by the end of the documentary. It was fascinating to watch the history of 7th street unfold before you -- what I call pre-Giuliani to post Giuliani. It went from being a Jewish enclave, to a hippie artist's mecca, to a dangerous drug area, to a Yuppie paradise whose rents are forcing all the old-timers out. It was so interesting to watch this in 2003, to watch people discussing the dangerous drug dealers in 1995, knowing what the people in '95 could have no way of knowing -- those dealers would soon be history. The people obviously think that the drug situation is eternal -- they have no idea what is right around the corner. The people represent all ethnic groups -- Jewish, Puerto Rican, black, Native American, white -- because that's what 7th Street was all about. Diversity. I am so glad Pais made this documentary. I spent a lot of time on the LES during my adolescence, and I actually knew and remembered some of the people he interviewed. I wish this were available on DVD. I would buy it immediately.