Ireland’s housing crisis is multifaceted.
Displace: The Battle For Dublin documents buildings lying derelict, landlords choosing to ‘no fault’ evict families on their sixth anniversary renting flats, artists being thrown out of their studio spaces despite being long-standing tenants, pockets of land that service communities being redeveloped for profit.
The lack of accommodation (affordable or not) is argued to be a result of commercial overdevelopment, exploitation of poor renter protections, and underinvestment in initiatives that could heal fractured communities.
James Redmond’s gentle pacing introduces the audience to people living precariously, unsure if their poorly maintained accommodation will ever be repaired (there’s an example of a large landlord taking nine years to fix a broken window), people wondering whether they’ll have a home to live in this time next year. We are introduced to individuals who are organising neighbours to form tenacious residents’ groups that can stand up to their wealthy landlords. And we see when lobbying and meetings turn to last ditch street protests.
There’s a quick lesson in ‘asset urbanism’, the concept of the rich making decisions about the urban landscape, using it as a playground for making money, with home owners and small commercial and cultural renters pawns in a bigger game of wealth extraction. Pockets of land become instruments of investment rather than habitats for humans to live and thrive.
Dublin is not alone in having a housing crisis. Locking people out of the city in which they grew up is common. Local government enabling commercial companies to delay redevelopment is not unusual. But despite the Celtic tiger, despite Dublin being the European home to so many multinational tech giants, it’s particularly chilling that there is such underinvestment in community-building that would benefit citizens in this city.
In Belfast and elsewhere up t’north, the derelict buildings tend to mysteriously combust at night, sometimes making it more necessary to be demolished. It’s hard to watch the film without wondering what a thriving North Street Arcade would be like and why the
poorly-named Tribeca Belfast project had been allowed to stagnate for so long. Maybe the scenes about the ‘blandmarks’ walking tour will inspire a Belfast version being developed.
Displace: The Battle For Dublin carries a sense of lament
throughout its 100-minute essay on the accommodation crisis. The sense
that hope is being lost is strong. But its humanisation weaves in
moments of celebration and appreciation amongst the sequences of
communities being pulled apart or squashed.
Throughout the film the character of buildings pops out from the screen with gorgeous black and white cinematography. Good people look tired. Protests look earnest. The final credits list contributors like a roll call of saints.
The last sequence suggests that a minor victory might be around the corner for one community. Yet the very fact that so many people need to move off the site for a number of years leaves the lingering worry that the redevelopment could still be delayed or dropped. It feels like a cake-fuelled ending that may yet have to fade into a title card that says “six years later, none of the residents were back living on the site”. Hopefully that’s not the case …
Displace: The Battle For Dublin is being screened as part of the Docs Ireland documentary film festival at 19:00 on Thursday 18 June in An Cultúrlann. Docs Ireland runs from 16 to 21 June. (links to my festival preview and the full programme)
The full programme can be viewed on the Docs Ireland website.
No comments:
Post a Comment