North End Documentary in the Making

-By Phil Orlandella

A $10,000 grant has been awarded to the North End Historic Society by the Baxter Foundation to produce an eight minute trailer about the North End.

Kendall Productions has apparently started filming interviews with people with knowledge of the North End.

According to James Pasto a member of the society, “The plan is to show the trailer at a community meeting in July, with the hope of spurring some fund raising.”

Reportedly, the goal is to raise about $70,000 through local businesses, organizations and companies like Pastene and Prince.

“We want the film to highlight the people who contributed to the North End in various ways,” Pasto noted.

There was talk of interviewing the former Welterweight Champion of the World (1955) Tony DeMarco, originally of Fleet Street, the society decided that would be a separate program on him.

The society is considering a dinner to honor DeMarco and use footage from the event in the documentary as well as a DeMarco interview.

“I’ve heard that people want to raise money for a statue of the former champ to be placed somewhere in the community,” Pasto said. “We could use the proceeds from a dinner in DeMarco’s honor toward creating a statue and possibly some of the money we earn on the documentary,” he added.

For more details contact James at jpasto@bu.edu.