'Philly on Fire,' a documentary on the 1985 MOVE bombing, won the Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize. The film will focus on the Philadelphia police and politicians responsible for the attack, and the Black liberation group's survivors. The $200,000 prize is meant to help the filmmakers finish production and distribution.
âWe felt the house shake, but it hadnât occurred to us that they dropped a bomb. Pretty quickly, it got smokier and smokier. At first we thought it was the tear gas, but then it got thicker. ⦠It started getting hot in there. The house was on fire.â - Ramona Africa, lone adult survivor of the 1985 MOVE bombing
What would you do if you turned on the news and found out the police had just bombed an entire neighborhood in your city? Would your foundational belief in America change? Would you live every day of your life in fear, knowing it could be taken away at any moment by the people sworn to protect and serve? Well, for the city of Philadelphia, this hypothetical scenario became a reality on May 13, 1985, when the Philadelphia Police Department dropped a bomb on U.S. soil in its effort to evacuate the Black liberation organization, MOVE. It isn t entirely clear whether one should be shocked that this happened or that the story remains largely unknown to many Amer