Centralia: "The town that was" | The Compost Bin | Forums

We use to drive right through there when we would go from Reading to my families area in Tioga county, till they bypassed the town around the mountain, very surreal driving over the mountains on a cold winter day and the ground smoking around you

looks like there will be a new documentary on it in the next year

CENTRALIA - A college student's senior film project inspired a cleanup of the town on fire Saturday and the making of a feature-length documentary, "Centralia, America's Lost Town."

"We were driving around here to get some interviews in April and saw all the tires and trash laying around, so I said, 'Why don't we get together and clean it up?' " Joe Sapienza, film and television graduate from Drexel

University and executive producer of the documentary, said Saturday.

The cleanup was organized by Sapienza and the Eastern Pennsylvania Coalition for Abandoned Mine Reclamation.

Two main sections of the town, one by the Odd Fellows Cemetery and the other off Railroad Avenue toward the backwoods, were taken by volunteers.

The effort began at 9 a.m. and was scheduled to last until 3 p.m. with a lunch break at noon, held at the municipal building.

Students from Wilkes University were a few of the 40 to 50 volunteers at the cleanup.

"We always do something for Make-a-Difference Day each year and thought this was a cool idea," sophomore Lara McQue, 19, said.

"Centralia has such a long history and we want to make it known for what it used to be, not what it's known for today," sophomore Troy Carey, 19, said.

Among the trash that the students cleaned up were about 100 old tires.

"I think a lot of people drive through and just dump their trash here," Carey said.

Carey said he was excited to be in Centralia because the town holds an iconic place in history.

"You just hear about how it's an old abandoned, creepy place so it's a cool place to see firsthand," Carey said.

The cleanup was coordinated in relation with the documentary Sapienza hopes to complete by late spring 2015.

A 17-minute cut of the film was created by Sapienza for his senior project at Drexel University this past spring.

"I was limited to 17 minutes because it played in a senior show with a ton of other senior film projects ... All of them together took, like, six hours to play," Sapienza said.

The short film came in second place at the senior film show and earned Sapienza an 'A plus" on the project, as well as a recommendation from the dean. Sapienza graduated with a film and television major from Drexel University in June.

The idea behind "Centralia, America's Lost Town," is to tell the story of Centralia from the 1800s until today, Sapienza said.

"Centralia is only thought of as the city with the mine fire, but there's a lot of history that happened before the fire," he said.

Sapienza already interviewed some residents and state officials but is looking to interview a few more residents before he is satisfied with his film content.

"I intend to tell their story of what really happened," he said. "A lot of residents don't know me so they don't want to be interviewed because of the way the media portrayed them, in which their story was kind of ignored and state officials' interviews were used."

Sapienza has about four or five hours of film already but plans to make the documentary about an hour and a half long, he said.

Sapienza is using a combination of his own equipment and equipment from Drexel University that is available to alumni.

"I'm funding the film on my own, but I'm hoping to find grant money," he said.

Among the people Sapienza interviewed Saturday was former town resident John Comarnisky, 60, of Frackville, who was running in Centralia on Saturday.

Comarnisky stood in front of the lot where his home once was, reminiscing over the times he spent there.

"Me and my mom planted that tree over there when I came back from the Navy," he said, pointing to a tree that now towered over the field of weeds.

Comarnisky's story, along with commentary on the demolition of homes that made property look like they were filled with sinkholes, were captured by Sapienza and his crew, Ed Kzepski, audio technician, and Austin LoCicero, camera man, on Saturday.

http://newsitem.com/.....-1.1777278

not really, it was actually pretty depressing, that whole area is, just small little coal towns, western pa is worse though