A weedy lot blossoms

But head downtown one of the next few evenings. Take a seat on the patch of asphalt on Hudson Street near the Chinatown Gate. See Jackie Chan and Jet Li cheat death. Hear the crowd laugh, the kids squeal, and the city hum all around you.

Behold the miracle that is Films at the Gate. Now in its fourth year, the outdoor film series is the brainchild of the visionary Asian Community Development Corporation, residents Sam and Leslie Davol, and Chinese cinema buff Jean Lukitsh.

The event, which starts tomorrow night and runs through Sunday, is an effort to bring back to Chinatown the kung-fu movies that once packed them in at the Star, the State, and the China - theaters that disappeared after the VCR arrived.

But what’s happening here is also something bigger: An event that brings the city to life without a lifetime of planning and divine intervention; it belongs completely to the neighborhood while drawing people from all over; it converts an urban dead spot into a vital place.

“People come around that corner, and instead of the vacant lot, they see Christmas lights and people sitting there eating takeout and watching a movie, and it’s remarkable,’’ says Sam Davol, who plays cello with the band The Magnetic Fields, and helped start the program after moving to Chinatown with his wife, Leslie, and their two kids four years ago.

More than 500 people tried to cram onto the lot to watch a movie during last year’s festival. This year, the program includes “Drunken Master,’’ the classic Jackie Chan movie, and “Shaolin Soccer,’’ about a down-and-out coach who builds a soccer team around a kung fu student’s killer kick. On Saturday night, the festival will relocate to a nearby part of the Greenway. Davol says that is just a one-off: The heart of Films at the Gate is that vacant lot.

I will never forget my first visit to that buckled spot the year the festival began: It was a warm Saturday night in early September, and there were maybe a hundred people gathered, some on beach chairs they had brought from home. Gleeful kids played in front of the screen. Locals and visitors sat together, laughing as they stared up at the movie. We watched Donnie Yen fell a villain in a crowded market with wit and a well-placed stick in a bicycle wheel. It felt like we were all part of something special.

You can find other grassrootsy fun like this in the city: The Lantern Festival at Forest Hills Cemetery; the annual Halloween bike ride, when costumed cyclists make an 18-mile loop from Jamaica Plain through Brookline and Cambridge; the South End Knitters, who grace bike racks and telephone poles with lovely yarn flowers and cozies.

The Davols have plans to bring us more of it: Come fall, their outfit, Boston Street Lab, will convert an unused Chinatown storefront into a temporary library. (The neighborhood lost its official branch decades ago.) After that, they’re hoping to transform an empty Downtown Crossing storefront into a rehearsal space for musicians or actors, so passersby can see a production coming together before the curtain goes up.

It’s an inspired way to think about animating the city, especially in a recession: Get a bunch of smart locals together, come up with a cool, short-term way to use vacant space, find a willing property owner, get the word out, and watch the magic happen.

There’s not nearly enough of it.

There are dozens of moribund lots like that one on Hudson Street, all over Boston. Imagine how much more spectacular the city would be if we claimed some of them.

Yvonne Abraham is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at abraham@globe.com.