A documentary film.
Stay tuned for premiere details!
Where do you go when the average home price is $4.5 Million, the cheapest freestanding house costs $1.8 Million, and you're 30 miles out to sea? Room For Us?: Confronting Nantucket's Housing Crisis invites audiences into the vibrant, diverse lives of Nantucket's year-round community as they grapple with the challenges of finding a home in one of the world’s most expensive real estate markets. From those living on the streets to families making over $180,000 a year, Nantucket’s housing crisis cuts across all demographics, threatening the very fabric of society. As one local puts it, “A place that rents for $65,000 a week is probably not something a teacher is going to be able to afford.” Despite significant investments in affordable housing and the efforts of a committed group of housing advocates, the unique pressures of living on a vacation island that caters to billionaires and millionaires has many locals asking: "Does Nantucket have room for us?"
At the leading edge of a growing national and global housing crisis, Nantucket’s stark wealth disparities, soaring rents, limited inventory, speculative investor ownership, short term rentals, and rising sea levels offer valuable lessons for communities far beyond its shores. However, deciding where to go from here is fraught with contention. Discover how a dedicated group of housing advocates is forging a path to consensus and developing long-term solutions to Nantucket’s housing challenges.
Semester Cinema is a groundbreaking, semester-long film program, unparalleled in the United States. Rooted in the liberal arts, the program immerses college students in every stage of producing an ambitious feature film for national release.
Room For Us?: Confronting Nantucket's Housing Crisis is the first feature documentary produced through Semester Cinema. Led by mentors Patrick Kennedy and Jasper Craven, the documentary unit spent three months living on Nantucket, from February to May 2024. Over the course of a seven week pre-production period, students were guided through lessons in documentary history, theory, research, and technical skills, while laying the groundwork for the production phase.
During the six week production period, students gained hands-on experience by rotating through roles that allowed students to sharpen their skills in camera operation, sound, directing, and editing, while directly contributing to the film. Students reached out to subjects, conducted interviews, managed equipment, and edited key segments, all in collaboration with their peers. The result was a truly unique and collective filmmaking experience.
As an award winning cinematographer, editor, and director, Patrick is passionate about every stage of the filmmaking process. With extensive credits in both documentary and narrative production, he continually refines his craft while mentoring the next generation of filmmakers. Patrick has been a dedicated mentor with Semester Cinema since its inception and teaches filmmaking at SOCAPA (the School of Creative and Performing Arts). Additionally, he co-directs TAP Into Film, a 72-hour film competition for teens and families.
Jasper Craven is an investigative journalist whose work has appeared in outlets including The Atlantic, POLITICO Magazine, NY Mag, Harper's, and The New York Times. He was a named finalist for the prestigious 2023 Livingston Award that honors journalists under the age of 35 for outstanding achievement in local, national and international reporting across all forms and media. His work with the Boston Globe’s Spotlight Team included the multi-part series, The Shadow Campus, that exposed a poorly regulated profit-driven housing system that subjected Boston students to unsafe and even deadly conditions. It was a named finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. He also served as lead researcher and on-air talent for a HBO Max documentary streaming that reveals new information on the U.S. Army’s infamous Edgewood experiments. Jasper leads the documentary program and assists with pre-production planning and research.
