Related Films and Videos

Gentrification, Housing and Homelessness

17 Reasons Why - Benefit Screening
Curated by Stephen Parr, Oddball Films

Battle for Broad about the Kennsington Welfare Rights Union in North Philadelphia.
(More info soon)

Bulldozed! Film and Video Festival
Various shorts and documentaries dealing with housing and displacement.

Bums' Paradise (2002, 53 min.)
Produced and Directed by Tomas McCabe
"On a peninsular landfill in the San Francisco Bay, a unique encampment of homeless people made a refuge. They lived there for more than eight years outside the "American Dream," creating not only an alternative society but also a wealth of art. They could not, however, avert a devastating eviction."

Delivered Vacant (1992, 118 min.)
Directed by Nora Jacobson. Produced by Off The Grid Productions.
"This award-winning documentary chronicles 8 years of housing gentrification in Hoboken, NJ, a mile-square city across the river from Manhattan. It features a real life cast of long time residents, newly arrived yuppies, tenant organizers, real estate developers, immigrants from around the world and the wackiest mayor in America. An intricate and deeply human portrait of the city and the people that lived there, the film went on to play at the New York Film Festival, Sundance, and the San Francisco Film Festival where it garnered a Golden Gate Award. In the doc, Jacobson captured all sides of the real estate struggle with an equally intelligent and wry eye, from eccentric politicians and naive developers, to Hoboken natives and newly transplanted yuppies."

Division + Western (2002, 28 min.)
Produced and Directed by Rachel Rinaldo
"Investigates and links issues of gentrification, colonialism, and cultural resistance in Chicago's Puerto Rican neighborhood, Humboldt Park. It illuminates the Puerto Rican Cultural Center's day-to-day fight against gentrification, examining how it relates to racism and colonialism, and explores how the neighborhood's cultural identity may itself be a resource against displacement. Experimental in style, the piece juxtaposes formal interviews with striking video and Super 8 images of community life, as well as rare archival footage of colonial Puerto Rico. Division + Western crosscuts descriptions of gentrification and poverty with images of celebration of Puerto Rican identity, weaving a narrative of displacement and discrimination into one of resistance."

Home Front (2001, 56 min.)
Produced by Jennifer Maytorena Taylor, Specific Pictures. A co-production with KQED TV, San Francisco.
Aired as part of KQED's Bay Window series of local documentaries. "Home Front tells the story of two communities that are fighting for the right to keep calling the Bay Area home after the technology boom of the 1990s made the region one of the country's most expensive place to live... San Francisco's Mission District and Richmond, a working-class, industrial town..."

The Hotel Upstairs (2000, 57 min.)
Directed and Produced by Daniel Baer
"Hidden away in plain sight on a busy street of San Francisco s North Beach, the Columbus Hotel provides a home for a vibrant and volatile mix of aging artists, immigrant families, and low income misfits of every stripe and description. This probing documentary strips away the outer walls of this dump with a view  to reveal the lives of the people within."

The Landfill (2001, 56 min.)
Directed and Produced by Sharon Farrell
"A moving account of the more than 70 people who are being evicted from homemade shelters on the East Bay's Albany landfill, a forsaken, serene location with a coveted view of the Bay Area. Courageous and independent people like Sarah, a college graduate and former social worker, and Dancer, a professional boxing champion, bear witness to the devastating effects of the evictions, gentrification and land-grab occurring in our own backyards."

"The Mission" Screening at The Lab
Curated by Adriana Montenegro
(Details Coming Soon)

Pharaoh's Streets (2000, 45 min.)
Produced and Directed by Jethro Rothe-Kushel
"Examines the dire conditions of homelessness in Los Angeles by presenting the vivid realities of the city's shelter-less victims and challenges viewers to question the stability of thier own realities. The Free Press called Pharaoh's Streets 'an eminently valuable visual text' with a 'startling and brave vision' of homelessness in America."

San Jose Gentrified
Produced by Autonomous Peoples Anarchist Group , San Jose.
"Documents what San Jose Redevelopment agency is doing to downtown, specifically vacant housing that was either torn down or moved to make way for a new, unneccessary city hall. Points out the city's lies and deceptions and tries to spread awareness on the ever growing problem of gentrification.
(Contact Information Requested).

Takeover about the Kennsington Welfare Rights Union in North Philadelphia.
(More info soon)

Taking Back The Land (2001, 4 min.)
Conscious Cinema, UK
"In Brazil, 3% of the people own 2/3 of the land. This short film tells how hundreds of thousands of landless peasants and squatters from the favelas occupy productive land left unused by big landowners. The Movimento Sem Terra, or MST, is the largest social movement in Latin America. With its help 350,000 families have transformed themselves from victims of poverty to self-sufficient rural workers living in legal settlements with pharmacies, schools and co-operative, mostly organic agriculture. For this, they are called terrorists by government and media while over a thousand activists have been killed in clashes with landowners and police. Yet the movement continues to grow, because everybody has the right to land."

Uprooted: Refugees of the Global Economy (2001, 28 min)
Directed by Ulla Nilsen. Produced by the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights with Sasha Khokha, Ulla Nilsen, Jon Fromer, and Francisco Herrera
"A compelling documentary about how the global economy has forced people to leave their home countries. Uprooted presents three stories of immigrants who left their homes in Bolivia, Haiti, and the Philippines after global economic powers devastated their countries, only to face new challenges in the United States. These powerful stories raise critical questions about U.S. immigration policy in an era when corporations cross borders at will. This documentary weaves together the stories of three immigrants into a compelling tale of how the global economy (including U.S. corporations and the International Monetary Fund) has forced immigrants to leave their home countries."

Venice Beach (2002, 67 min.)
Directed by Marc Madow. Produced by Medicine Bow Gallery.
"About the Venice Beach Boardwalk and Drumcircle which is threatened by gentrification. The drum circle scenes in particular are said to be unmatched in their success at conveying the feeling of being right there with the dancers and drummers of the drumcircle. One film critic noted that the entire film represented a primitive-modern vision of America that he had never seen before."

Dot Coms

21 Dog Years: Doing Time @ Amazon.com (2000, 4 min.)
By John Tynes and Michael Daisey
Amusing on-line short on I film by and about a downsized Amazon.com employee sneaking back in to work after hours. Actor and playwright Michael Daisey worked for Amazon.com during two of its most tumultuous years. A year after quitting, he used his expired credentials and entered the corporate HQ with filmmaker John Tynes to wreak merry havoc on his former employer. Produced in conjunction with his live one-man theater work.

Dot (2001, 83 min.)
Produced by Simeon Schnapper and Brett Singer. A Sneaky Kings Production.
Debut feature production."Winner of Slamdunk's Best Comedy and The Independent Spirit Awards, is a groundbreaking mockumentary of nine months in the life of Zectek.com, an Internet startup company. A social satire and sly comedy of manners unfolds through "behind-the-scenes footage" and interviews with the company s founders and employees. As Zectek.com rides the e-commerce roller coaster, the twenty and thirty-something s that run it have their lives turned repeatedly inside out."

Dot Con (Airdate: January 24, 2002)
Written and Produced by Martin Smith, Co-produced by Sarah Silver. A PBS Frontline Production.
"Takes an inside look at the precipitous rise and fall of the Internet economy -- and examines the allegations that brokers at some of Wall Street's most prestigious firms manipulated the hot IPO market of the late 1990s. Wall Street, of course, would prefer to forget the past. But investors and investigators want to know: During the headiest days of the Internet bubble, did investment banks and venture capitalists betray the public's trust? Did 'irrational exuberance' give way to fraud? 'CS First Boston, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch -- I mean, these are the biggest players,' Manhattan attorney Mel Weiss tells FRONTLINE. 'We're dealing with a market manipulation by the investment banking community.' It's a story that raises fundamental questions about American capitalism, about how our financial markets operate, and about what the Internet and the "new economy" are supposed to promise."

Dreaming in Code (2001, 23 min.)
Directed and Produced by Leena Pendharkar.
"Looks through the lens of one start-up at the excited and optimistic set of young, privileged, single, occasionally-raving workaholic entrepreneurs and programmers who literally live in their office."

On Line (2001, 85 min.)
Directed by Jed Weintrob. Produced by Tanya Selvaratnam & Jed Weintrob.
Creepy sounding movie "about people watching people. Through a webcam, you can look, but you can't touch..."

Silicon Alley Stories a.k.a. Startupnyc.com (2001, 85 min.)
Directed and Produced by Thurston Smith and Vittoria Frua. A Spartan Punk Production.
"Documentary looks at what happened to those optimistic twenty-somethings who came to New York to cash in on the Internet craze.
The unhappy story is that of Incogniti.com, a privacy enabling technology company. The happy story is about Thesquare.com, which was started as a more than slightly pretentious Internet community for Ivy League alumni."

Startup.com (2001, Feature)
Directed by Chris Hegedus and Jehane Noujaim. Produced by D.A. Pennebaker.
"A behind-the-scenes look at the volatile start-up phenomenon, chronicling the turbulent development of Govworks.com, an award-winning Internet site that facilitates interaction between local government, citizens and businesses. Picking up where today's headlines leave off, Startup.com examines the current troubled state of the Internet revolution, in which inflated ideals and dreams of instant wealth have been supplanted by harsh economic realities and broken promises. Graced with sensitive storytelling and a dynamic, intimate cinema-verite style, the film also manages to personalize this crisis with intensely private views of the people involved. More than just an insider look at an industry in flux, Startup.com becomes a deft exploration of friendship and the conflict between personal and business relationships."