Photographer Dmitri Kasterine stands in front of portraits he took of City of Newburgh residents that adorn the outside of the Ritz Theater in Newburgh. Kasternine has finished a documentary about Newburgh that will be shown on Saturday at Atlas Studios. [ALLYSE PULLIAM/FOR THE TIMES HERALD-RECORD] ▲

CITY OF NEWBURGH – Hardship and hope.

In Dmitri Kasterine's new documentary, the impoverished residents at the City of Newburgh's margins economically and socially air their grievances: the lack of accessible jobs; high rents and predatory landlords; indifferent public officials; a soul-sucking environment filled with vacant buildings.

There is more to the story, however. Scenes of poverty alternate with snippets of girls jumping rope, boys cart-wheeling down a sidewalk and a man giving two boys a chess lesson. One man tells of how he wants to buy a house in the city.

"Newburgh is such a wonderful place," he said. "It's just dilapidated right now and eventually we'll get back to where it belongs."

Six years ago, the London-born Kasterine published a book of photograph portraits of Newburgh residents taken over 16 years. Large prints of those portraits form the outdoor exhibit that since 2012 has filled the east wall of the Ritz Theater.

Questions about the fates of some of the people he photographed partly drove the filming of "Newburgh: Beauty and Tragedy." Kasterine will have a free public screening of the one-hour documentary at 6 p.m. Saturday at Atlas Studios, 11 Spring St. in Newburgh.

"The economic factor is creeping up on people I've talked to, and I don't know what they'll do," he said.

Newburgh has undergone significant changes since Kasterine began shooting the film in the summer of 2013 and raising money via Kickstarter to help underwrite the documentary's completion.

Violent crime, including shootings, has fallen dramatically. Newburgh has gone the year without a homicide.

New businesses have opened and new residents purchased once-abandoned houses. The Newburgh Community Land Bank has collaborated with Habitat for Humanity and Kingston-based affordable housing developer RUPCO to turn vacant properties into new single-family homes and apartments.

But 33 percent of Newburgh's residents, and 45 percent of children under 18, were under the poverty level in 2016, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Both estimates were more than twice the state averages.

"What struck me always was the clarity with which people could put over to me what was wrong," said Kasterine, who estimates the film's cost at between $60,000 and $70,000.

"There was no muddled thinking about it," he said.

The film revisits a man who was 15 and a new father when Kasterine first took his picture. Years later he talks about the difficulty of growing up without adult role models.

Another man shows his "studio apartment," the parked SUV where he keeps clothes-filled luggage and sleeps. The man tells how he struggles to avoid returning to drug dealing.

A woman who was 17 and walking on Liberty Street when Kasternine asked to photograph her left Newburgh but returned.

"Newburgh is home; it has a lot of bad, but it has a lot of love, too," she said. "I think I got more love for it than more hate."

lsparks@th-record.com