A vanishing neighborhood
Willets Point in Queens, N.Y., is a 75-acre patch of hustling junk dealers, mechanics, tire dealers, and auto glass installers. Savvy drivers troll the potholed streets of this offbeat commercial hive looking for the best fix-it deals in New York. About 2,000 people work in 250 businesses. But the city has plans for a new $3 billion retail and office complex there. Willets Point will soon disappear in a puff of rust, taking with it one of the last vestiges of a scrappy free-market New York. Luckily, its sights and sounds are captured in “Foreign Parts,” an 80-minute documentary film co-directed by two fellows at Harvard’s Film Study Center. (The fellows program there is the only graduate-level source of arts funding at the University.) Released last fall, “Foreign Parts” has already captured six international film prizes, including the prize for best first feature at the prestigious Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland. (Its first...