One Big Home

On the tiny island of Martha's Vineyard, where presidents and celebrities vacation, trophy homes threaten to destroy the islands unique character. Twelve years in the making, One Big Home follows one carpenters journey to understand the trend toward giant houses. When he feels complicit in wrecking the place he calls home, he takes off his tool belt and picks up a camera.

Unarmed Verses

Toronto filmmaker Charles Officer profiles the young people of Villaways Park, a housing project on brink of historic change.

Flag Wars

Filmed over four years, this documentary focuses on the impacts of gentrification as gay white professionals move into a largely black working-class neighborhood in Columbus, Ohio.

Empire City

A film essay contrasting the modern metropolis with its "golden age" from 1830-1930, with the participation of some of New York's leading political and cultural figures. Made at a time when the city was experiencing unprecedented real estate development on the one hand and unforeseen displacement of population and deterioration on the other. Empire City is the story of two New Yorks. The film explores the precarious coexistence of the service-based midtown Manhattan corporate headquarters with the peripheral New York of undereducated minorities living in increasing alienation.

Cinebuano

Six individuals from different generations recall the golden age of Cebuano cinema, modern Cebuano cinema, their experiences, and discuss their aspirations about the future of Cebu’s film scene.

Tell Them We Were Here

Tell Them We Were Here is an inspirational feature-length documentary about eight artists who show us why art is vital to a healthy society and reminds us that we are stronger together.

Quartiers sous tension

Peace to This House

A film photo-montage about an old house that belonged to a traditional local family that was later demolished.

There's No Place Like This Place, Anyplace

Over the course of over six decades, Honest Ed's became a Toronto Landmark. The neighbourhood it left behind when it closed its doors in 2016 reflects on its history and legacy.

The Bannfoot Ferry

A forgotten history of Northern Ireland is unveiled through a journey into Ulster Television’s archives, and the rediscovery of the first locally-produced network drama, Boatman Do Not Tarry.

Anonymous

A short film about the changing face of London Soho and the implications of gentrification on Mimi, an aging transvestite.

The Iron Triangle: Willets Point and the Remaking of New York

Targeted for several failed redevelopment plans dating back to the days of Robert Moses, Willets Point, a gritty area in New York City known as the “Iron Triangle,” is the home of hundreds of immigrant-run, auto repair shops that thrive despite a lack of municipal infrastructure support. During the last year of the Bloomberg Administration, NYC’s government advanced plans for a “dynamic” high-end entertainment district that would completely wipe out this historic industrial core. The year is 2013, and the workers of Willets Point are racing against the clock to forestall their impending eviction. Their story launches an investigation into New York City’s history as the front line of deindustrialization, urban renewal, and gentrification.

Bestseller Barcelona: The World of Carlos Ruiz Zafón

A journey through the fantastic and mysterious Barcelona that the Spanish writer Carlos Ruiz Zafón (1964-2020) loved so much, the city of myth and legend, the city that was before it became one of the main European tourist destinations.

Cruel Architecture, a Tool of Gentrification

A short documentary shot in November 2021 in Berkeley. It reflects on the ethos of privatization in American culture and how public spaces are being built to exclude people through cruel architecture. The context used is the gentrification circle around the University of California Berkeley intended to build student housing. An eye-opening journey that explores structures and elements you would never have stopped at.

Nemesis

The film explores the destruction of a unique train station in Zurich and the construction of the new prison and police centre in its place. From the perspective of the filmmaker’s window, and with testimony from prisoners awaiting deportation, the film probes how we deal with the extinction of history and its replacement with total security.

The Pruitt-Igoe Myth

Destroyed in a dramatic and highly-publicized implosion, the Pruitt-Igoe public housing complex has become a widespread symbol of failure amongst architects, politicians and policy makers. The Pruitt-Igoe Myth explores the social, economic and legislative issues that led to the decline of conventional public housing in America, and the city centers in which they resided, while tracing the personal and poignant narratives of several of the project's residents. In the post-War years, the American city changed in ways that made it unrecognizable from a generation earlier, privileging some and leaving others in its wake. The next time the city changes, remember Pruitt-Igoe.

Gut Renovation

Su Friedrich's personal essay charting the destruction of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. After living in the neighborhood for 20 years, the filmmaker was one of many who were forced out after the city passed a rezoning plan allowing developers to build luxury condos where there were once thriving industries, working-class families, and artists. Filmed over many years, it is a scathing portrait of one neighborhood's demolition and transformation.

Two Doors

The documentary Two Doors traces the Yongsan Tragedy of 2009, which took the lives of five evictees and one police SWAT unit member. Left with no choice but to climb up a steel watchtower in an appeal to the right to live, the evictees were able to come down to the ground a mere 25 hours after they had started to build the watchtower, as cold corpses. And the surviving evictees became lawbreakers. The announcement of the Public Prosecutors’ Office that the cause of the tragedy lay in the illegal and violent demonstration by the evictees, who had climbed up the watchtower with fire bombs, clashed with voices of criticism that an excessive crackdown by government power had turned a crackdown operation into a tragedy.

Work in Progress

An author spends a year and a half filming what happens as a new apartment building is built in a neighborhood of Barcelona.

My Brooklyn

Director Kelly Anderson's personal journey as a Brooklyn 'gentrifier' to understand the forces reshaping her neighborhood along lines of race and class. The film reframes the gentrification debate to expose the corporate actors and government policies driving displacement and neighborhood change.