Given the basic capitalistic ambition of city centres, economic force is an important city pretext. Cities are far more populated than their rural and suburban surroundings. Almost half of the world’s population live in cities today and, according to Next Generation Research, almost two-thirds will do so by 2050. Commercial growth, opportunity for investment, creativity and experimentation encourage bigger work forces. In essence, money drives people to cities, and then continues to attract people around them. But the distribution of wealth is unequal, accumulating more in some corners and leaving other areas behind or completely marginalised.
The following three films will look at the economic marginalisation processes that occurs with gentrification – at times referred to as urban growth or even development. Push invites its audience to follow housing advocate Leilani Farha as she investigates how people are priced out of their city homes and into the unknown. In contrast to the global city perspective of Push, the second film, Estate – A Reverie takes us to a specific estate in East London’s Hoxton neighbourhood. Artist and filmmaker Andrea Luka Zimmerman’s Estate, a Reverie, presents a more intimate look from inside the homes of people being displaced due to a major urban ‘regeneration’ project. And finally, Not Just Roads takes us to the growing urban sprawl around one of India’s biggest megalopolises, Delhi, in a visual example of the power the ruling classes have on people who lack the privilege of benefiting from elitist models of urban ‘development’. The film also demonstrates how this kind of development disrupts social structures and vital spiritual traditions.
15/03/2023
Estate, a Reverie (2015)
83min | UK | English with English Subtitles
Director: Andrea Luka Zimmerman
This surreal documentary centres on the tenants of Haggerston Estate, in East London. Directed by artist/filmmaker Andrea Luka Zimmerman, herself a tenant of the estate, this film aims to make visible those who are largely overlooked in the process of gentrification. As each tenant is displaced from their home, we hear their story. As is usual, the question of why these buildings are being vacated prompts only vague replies. The powerlessness of the tenants is glimpsed from the cascade of personal problems they narrate that have no solution. Ultimately, as Andrea herself refers to it, these are ‘narratives of powerlessness, coming from people who are insignificant, with a voice that does not count’ (online at https://www.metalculture.com/projects/andrealukazimmerman/). When a person is told they must leave their home to make space for a tenant with higher income, how do such stories unfold, what is the outcome and who tells it?
Read Andrea Luka Zimmerman’s essay on the play of power through economy, language and elsewhere: Building Resistance: Performing the Reality of Life Through Protest.
i am here is an art project by Zimmerman and Lasse Johansson happening concurrently with the making of the film.
See Andrea Luka Zimmerman’s visual essay, Estate – A Journey in Three Stages…, about the area surrounding the Haggerston estate.
26/04/2023
Push (2018)
92min| Sweden/Canada | English, Spanish, German, Italian, Korean, Frensh, with English Subtitles
Director: Fredrik Gertten
Push, a documentary from award-winning Swedish director Fredrik Gertten, follows Canadian lawyer and housing advocate, Leilani Farhani, as she tracks the changes in the rent economy, asking: what has led to this housing crisis? Led by Farhani, the film investigates why living in major cities is becoming less and less affordable. Housing is a fundamental human right, a precondition to a safe and healthy life. But in cities all around the world, having a place to live is becoming more and more difficult. Who are the players and what are the factors that make housing one of today’s most pressing world issues? Farhani travels from her Toronto base to other cities, including Barcelona and Seoul, speaking to academics Saskia Sassen and Joseph Stiglitz, among others, about the relationship between property, rent economy and capitalism.
Since making the film, Farhani and Gertten have started a podcast, PUSHBACK Talks, about various issues that affect rent affordability. See where to hear the podcast [here].
03/05/2023
Not Just Roads (2020)
67min| India and Switzerland | English with English Subtitles
Director: Nitin Bathla & Klearjos Eduardo Papanicolaou
Not Just Roads is an ethnographic documentary film that narrates the story of the massive urban transformation underway in India. Highways are being constructed at the galloping rate of 23 kilometres per day under the Indian government's Bharatmala (Garland of Limitless Roads) program. The program aims to open new land for the emerging Indian middle class. Currently, the land is inhabited by villages, working class neighbourhoods, and nomadic herders, and is criss-crossed by native trails and vital ecological commons. This film captures the story of one such highway outside Delhi, from the perspective of human and non-human actors.
This ethnographic film looks into the building of a major highway and the luxury flats and complexes built around it. The film documents the displacement of communities and tribes, the demolition of spiritual and ecological spaces and the further marginalisation of working-class people who find themselves priced out of the area.
Read the essay which accompanies the film, written by co-directors Nitin Bathla and Klearjos Eduardo with comments by urbanism expert, Momen El-Husseiny.
Watch this Q&A and workshop for Not Just Roads, hosted by Unlearning the Urban Seminar at Syracuse University.