New York’s tapestry explored amidst hope of Obama election

One of the reasons Rachel Shuman loves New York City is that she never knows what she might see while strolling a sidewalk.

In her movie “One October,” she provides a glimpse: Indian people draping flowers on a statue of Mahatma Gandhi, a priest blessing pets brought to him by the faithful, and dancing roller skaters.

“The adventure of turning the corner into a new world was thrilling to me,” she said. “It’s harder to find, but I still have plenty of examples where I say, 'My God, I can only find that in New York.'”

“One October” will screen Thursday through Saturday at the Gateway Film Center. After the Saturday screening, Shuman will answer audience questions via Skype.

The 47-year-old filmmaker is a Boston native who lives in Beacon, New York, about 60 miles north of Manhattan. From 1997 through 2014, however, she lived in the Big Apple.

She got the idea for her movie from the 1962 film “Le Joli Mai,” in which What: Where:

Contact: Showtimes: Admission: $7.50 Thursday, $10.75 Friday and $9 Saturday

director Chris Marker used interviews and vignettes to create a portait of Paris. Her plans crystallized in 2008.

“I was living in the East Village, and I felt what was happening here is the city is changing quickly," she said. "Every time I turned around, a new high-rise was being built. There was a seismic shift in the landscape.”

Shuman examines a city changed by gentrification and charged by a presidential election.

“I felt, 'I want to make this film now,'” she said, “and I wanted to set it in an election time because I felt that people have a lot of opinions they want to express, and it would be an entry into people’s thoughts.”

The movie, filmed in October 2008, weaves vignettes with man-onthe-street-style interviews by Clay Pigeon, an on-air personality for independent community radio station WFMU in Jersey City, New Jersey, across the Hudson River from Manhattan.

After hearing Pigeon’s radio show, which included similar interviews, Shuman knew that his nonthreatening-yet-persistent tone was right for her movie.

In the film, Pigeon gently probes New Yorkers for the stories of their lives. He speaks with a transgender woman who acknowledged that she financed her gender-reassignment surgery through prostitution and a construction worker who says he shelved his dreams of being a photographer because he has two sons and $76,000 in student-loan debt.

One woman complains that gentrification is drastically changing her Harlem neighborhood.

“I’m scared in my heart,” she says. “Five more years, I won’t be living here.”

The 2008 presidential campaign is a recurring theme. Shuman acknowledges that her pro-Barack Obama views are reflected.

“My parents always talked about (John F.) Kennedy and how they admired him,” she said. “I hadn’t seen that energy from my generation for a particular candidate. It was exciting.

“The film, for me, was about a change in the direction in the country."

Although the movie was filmed in 2008, Shuman had planned to release it about a decade later.

“I wanted the film to come out at the end of Obama’s tenure,” she said. “It was a marker for the moment before, and I wanted it to come out the moment after — as a way of looking back at a period of time. It was a completion, and we can look back about our hopes and what the reality was.”

Taken as a whole, though, the film serves as a valentine of sorts to the city.

“It’s a clear-eyed love letter, one that covers the faults and sees some of the problems,” Shuman said. “It’s almost a warning cry: ‘What’s happening here? Don’t you love this part of the city, and can’t you see it’s disappearing?’”

“One October” Gateway Film Center, 1550 N. High St. 614-247-4433, www. gatewayfilmcenter.org 9 a.m. Thursday, 9 p.m. Friday and 1 p.m. Saturday; discussion with director Rachel Shuman via Skype after the Saturday screening