LEWISTON – A downtown community’s fight to be seen and heard will soon reach the big screen.

On Thursday, members of the Visible Community initiative – representing some of the poorest people in Lewiston – will premiere “Neighbor by Neighbor: Mobilizing an Invisible Community in Lewiston, Maine.” The showing is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. at the Lewiston Public Library.

Culled from more than 200 hours of footage, the feature-length documentary hopes to tell the Visible Community story.

In 2004, the group formed to fight a city plan to build a boulevard through a neighborhood of tenement buildings and small houses. The city’s Heritage plan could have displaced more than 800 people.

But it never happened. Complaints from the Visible Community helped convince city leaders to discard the plan.

“We’ve proven that there’s a community here,” said Barbara Rankins, who was among the founders. And the community has continued.

When the boulevard issue died, the organization lobbied to replace a closed city park and authored its own downtown master plan. Meanwhile, there have been meetings and potlucks, demonstrations and get-togethers.

Cameras recorded almost every gathering.

The raw footage, originally meant to serve as a simple record of the group, became the backbone of the movie, created by Craig Saddlemire, a Bates College student turned neighborhood resident.

The movie also includes footage shot specifically for the film and interviews with residents.

It’s meant to give folks hope that they can change their neighborhood or their city, Rankins said.

“It’s that combination of all the littles,” she said. By sticking together and forming a unified voice, regular folks forced change.

After the movie premieres Thursday, Saddlemire hopes to show the 98-minute documentary at film festivals. Eventually, it’ll be available on DVD and online.

A trailer for the film is available on the Internet at http://tinyurl.com/au8eak.

One immediate goal is to get the movie into the hands of other communities fighting to be noticed, Rankins said.

Every person can make a difference, she said.

“You hear it and you don’t always believe it,” Rankins said. “We all matter.”