“In the middle of a rapidly changing London, a housing crisis rips through the capital eating up communities and council estates along the way. Two lives intertwine as they are forced to say goodbye to their memories.”
A new documentary exploring gentrification had its opening screening this month at the Ritzy in Brixton to a packed room of local residents and interested guests, so many that a second screening was arranged for later that day.
Uprooted follows the last days of residents moving from Myatt’s Field North estate in Lambeth to their new build homes in ‘Oval Quarter,’ as the spaces they call home are destroyed as part of a program of ‘regeneration’.
“So many residents say ‘why do we have to have this demolition, why do we have to have this regeneration program?’ Because we like it here. Its traumatic, people don’t realize this. Y’know they just think well you should be grateful you’ve got a new home but it’s the psychological, it’s the emotional, the spiritual attachment to your property and your memories.” – Amaka
The documentary is by independent director and film-maker Ross Domoney, whose previous work has followed the political climate in Greece from the perspective of street protesters, farmers and refugees arriving in Lesbos as well as detailing a Romanian family’s experience of social exclusion and confrontation with the police in Paris in the fight for a roof over their head.
The film followed an introduction by Dr Stuart Hodkinson, a Lecturer in Critical Urban Geography, whose research focuses on the day-to-day realities of housing privatization and state-led gentrification in the UK. After the screening came a lively discussion with Lambeth residents alongside poems and speeches, tears, anger and joy.
The voices of residents at the sharp end of London’s housing crisis and the ongoing processes of social cleansing have come to the fore in recent years through high-profile campaigns such as Focus E15, which saw residents in Newham occupy and protest the planned demolition of perfectly livable estate buildings, leading to concessions by the council after a lengthy ordeal.
Behind these campaigns are hard-working residents who fight to amplify the voices and stories of those pushed aside by supposedly positive ‘progress’, exposing what is marketed as the antidote for the city’s housing problems for what it is, toxic profiteering.
The process of connecting once separate housing struggles in the capital and beyond has been some time in the making, galvanized by a group of volunteers under the umbrella group Radical Housing Network. The group has organized meetings, mutual support networks and collaborations between council house residents, squatters, students and more. At the time of MIPIM property fair, they organized a counter-conference which saw housing activists from Italy, Spain and elsewhere come together to discuss challenges and opportunities. Here, the fabric of a networked housing movement is beginning to form.
Its successes have often come in spite of wider media coverage, driven by friends, neighbors, campaigners and activists with a shared purpose. If the movement is to have the strength to push back against developers who promise ‘housing, jobs and growth’, promises which are later revealed to be quite empty or enjoyed by a privileged few, it will need continued public support.
To book a screening of Uprooted and to drive the conversation forward, contact Ross on photographyross@mac.com
Image : Ross Domoney
