I went to Panel A: Refiguring the Urban Imaginary: Documentary and Gentrification on Sunday afternoon. The panel included three speakers, the first being Kelly Anderson, who showed some clips from her film My Brooklyn. The film was about the Fulton Mall in downtown Brooklyn, focusing on how the mall is viewed by members of the community. She interviewed friends and strangers, white and black. The response was clear that the white members of the community viewed Fulton Mall as dirty and an eyesore, while black members of the community thought of it as a place of history in their neighborhood. A lot of the white people interviewed had nothing nice to say about the mall and even expressed that it should go away. The black people said that while it could use some improvement, it's part of their community and they wouldn't want to see it go. Anderson said afterwards that she didn't just choose the worst responses from white people--that that was really the common reaction about the Fulton Mall. You could tell in watching her film that she aimed to get all different kinds of view points to feature, which I think is really important in creating a balanced film.
The second speaker was Sue Friedrich, who showed clips from her film Gut Renovation. She said that the film, which was completed in 2012, was a 10+ year project. She documented the transformation of her very own neighborhood, Williamsburg, as gentrification ripped it apart. Beginning in the early 2000s, Friedrich documented store owners in the area who had had shops there for 25 years, who were being kicked out by developers. These developers were coming in to Williamsburg, tearing down old buildings, and building huge high rise apartment buildings to accommodate the increasing demand for living space in Williamsburg. I found it interesting to see what the community was like in Williamsburg before gentrification. Knowing Williamsburg now, pretty much all you see is yuppies transplanted in New York from somewhere else in the world. Now, having seen the Williamsburg community before gentrification happened, it's going to make me kind of sad going there. All these young people moving in to be hip and cool, meanwhile driving out old shops and businesses. It's like a modern day Christopher Columbus in the New World scenario.
The last speaker was an East Harlem native who was speaking through Skype because he was in Puerto Rico, I'm forgetting his name. They showed clips of his film that documented the gentrification in the neighborhood he grew up in, which is historically Hispanic. He was saying how when we was growing up, all the white people got off the train before it got up to the 100s. But as time went on, this changed, and more yuppies started moving to the area. He documented a widowed woman who had lived in her apartment with her husband for 25 years, and her landlord was trying to tempt her to move out. She was justly upset, because she had all these memories in her apartment, and to be asked to leave after her husband died was ridiculous. These are the unfortunate consequences of gentrification. I guess it's kind of hard to avoid because there are always going to be young artists coming to NYC to follow their dreams, and they have to live somewhere. It's unfortunate that they move here at the cost of ruining entire communities, but I think if people can be conscious of it and be respectful of old communities and not buy into these huge high rise apartments, there can maybe be a better relationship between natives and newcomers.
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