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July 24, 2012
The Brooklyn Gentrification Film Series
The L Magazine
by Henry Stewart
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Tomorrow night, with My Brooklyn, Filmwax kicks off its documentary screening series Brooklyn Reconstructed, featuring seven films about development and gentrification that will be screened one a month through January at the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture in Park Slope. We spoke to Filmwax's Adam Schartoff about development in Brooklyn, and why there are so many documentaries about our borough.
Why put on a series like this now?
The films are all movies that were made over many years, and documented a changing city in ways that the "media" has been unable to. In large part I think they were inspired by a wave of "development without representation." In each case the filmmakers observed a government/business effort to push through zoning changes that brought massive revenue to developers in ways that denied any real input to those citizens most affected by the plans. Gentrification and development are nothing new. But what's taken place in neighborhoods like Williamsburg and Downtown Brooklyn, to name just two, are the results of a very different phenomena. While being floated as normal change, in fact what we've seen in the past decade is not organic gentrification, but a remarkably calculated land grab designed by our mayor, the City Planning Committee and a few greedy developers. These folks are owning both sides of the argument. It's rather impressive, really.
Posted by eric at July 24, 2012 7:41 PM