Bulldozed! Film & Video Festival

WHY BULLDOZED!?

The purpose of the Bulldozed! Film & Video Festival is to showcase progressive film and video works that deal with Gentrification, Evictions, the Housing Crisis, Homelessness, Dot Coms' and New Economy's effect on working class and poor people, and of course on Community Organizing to solve these problems. The festival is a unique opportunity to view little seen works about the growing phenomena of gentrification and displacement. Proceeds from the screenings will be donated to the Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition (MAC). The Bulldozed! festival is associated with the Whose City? screenings on March 27 and 28.

THE FESTIVAL PROGRAM

Play for Keeps: The Struggle to save NYC Community Gardens, Paper Tiger Television, 18 min, video, 2000
Community gardens are an endangered species in NYC. "Esperanza (Hope)" a 23-year old Lower East Side garden, was bulldozed by the Giuliani administration in January to make way for "affordable housing." Playing for Keeps asks the question: "affordable to whom?" and exposes the city's attempts to gentrify New York1s poorest neighborhoods and destroy thriving communities.

Bum's Paradise (WORK IN PROGRESS), Thomas Mc Cabe & Andrei Rozen, 38 min, video, 2001
Of the countless homeless camps across the U.S. -- people living under bridges, in cars, and in parks -- this film takes you to the heart of one camp located on the San Francisco Bay, at the end of a long narrow isthmus- The Albany Landfill, also known as Bums' Paradise. Tomas McCabe and Andrei Rozen spent a summer with resident Robert "Rabbit" Barringer, filming and learning about the landfill residents before, during and after their eviction by the City of Albany.

Excerpt from Breaking the Bank, Lina Hoshino and Sleeping Giant Productions, video, 2000
In 1982, the World Bank teamed up with a brutal dictatorship in Guatemala to construct a hydroelectric dam in the village of Rio Negro. After villages refused to relocate from their ancestral lands, the Bank averted its eyes when the army massacred some 400 Maya, mostly women and children. Today, an international campaign is holding the World Bank accountable to pay reparations for the disaster.

Golf War, Jen Schradie & Matt DeVries, 39 min, video, 1999
When Filipino villagers resist converting their ancestral farmland into a golf resort, they face a bloody struggle against developers and their government. Tracking down both armed guerrillas and golf boosters in the Philippines, including Tiger Woods, filmmakers reveal a larger, national battle over land and revolution in what the LA Times called a "bombshell of an expose'."

Loading Animated Version, Angie Waller, New York, 8:30 min, video, 2000
This video demonstrates that dot coms could potentially be no different from infamous manufacturing companies and their unethical disregard of good labor practice, especially when soliciting workers from "cheaper" overseas labor pools.

Housing Takeover - Homes Not Jails, Alchymedia, 23:49 min, video, 2000
Housing activists takeover and renovate a dilapidated abandoned home with the intention of handing it over to a homeless family.

Boom! Trailer, Whispered Media, 4 min, video, 2001
The preview of Whispered Media's upcoming documentary on the Economic Boom, Gentrification, and the Housing Crisis in the San Francisco Bay Area - ground zero for the world's so-called "New Economy."

San Francisco Celebrates, Whispered Media, 3 min, 2001
A look into the dot com bubble, exposing the indulgent absurdity of last year's internet celebration. Adventure capital and champagne flow free in this expose' of the technology boom that was.

Gentro Mixed Mojado Trailer, Pepe Urquijo, 10 min, video, 2001
Computer start ups have brought more than money towards the nation's economy, they have deposited computer savvy-twenty somethings in cultural banks, such as the Mission District, San Francisco, thus mixing pennies with pesos and gems, and in the process, causing economic, cultural, housing, social, ancestral tension within these esoteric communities, to the point of boiling uneasiness and political upheaval. Through the viewpoint of several different characters that live inside the same apartment building, "Gentro/Mixed/Mojado" offers different perspectives, whether economic or cultural, from the new yuppie and established, traditional residents of the "boiling" Mission district.

The Fall of the I Hotel, Curtis Choy, 57 min, video, 1983
"The Fall of the I-Hotel" brings to life the battle for housing in San Francisco. The brutal eviction of the International Hotel's tenants culminated a decade of spirited resistance to the razing of Manilatown.

Adventure Capitalism, Carl Diehl, 5 min, video, 2001
This video chronicles a very real disease of gentrification as it occurs in your very own mental space! Ads as viruses. Tapeworm as corporate mode. We think of new communication technology as being beneficial. It's more probable that these technologies are deliberately promoted to insure habits of consumption. Microscopic ad viruses will gentri-fry your brain, eradicating memories, installing corporate identities.

This Black Soil, Teresa Konechne, 1 hour, video
Bayview Citizens for Social Justice is a grass-roots community organization forced into existence to fight the state of Virginia's plans to build a maximum security prison in their front yards. The phenomenal leaders of this community secured 7 milion dollars to build a new rural community village in place of the proposed prison site.

No Nos Vamos, Sleeping Giant Productions, 3:19, video, 2001
This short video documents the MAC action at Bigstep where 14 activists were arrested in civil disobedience of Bigstep's illegal use of the Bay View Bank Building.

Forced Native American Relocation, Luis Salazar, 6:10 min, video
"Forced Native American Relocation (FNAR)" is a short documentary conceived for multilingual broadcast on the internet as an urgent-action call in support of the Navajo (Dineh') people's opposition to forced relocation from their ancestral lands in Big Mountain.

Voices of Cabrini, Ronit Bezalel and Antonio Ferrera, 30 min, video, 1999
In 1995, demolition began at Cabrini Green, one of Chicago1s most well known housing projects. This demolition is part of a nation-wide plan to tear down high rise public housing. Cabrini Green is home to a strong community of African-American residents - many of whom are fighting to stay and preserve their community. Shot over a period of three years, "Voices of Cabrini" is the story of how redevelopment is changing this neighborhood.

Hdwd Flrs, No Fee, No Pets, Meredith E. Holch, New York, 19 min, video
Whatever happened to tenant rights? The current real estate boom in New York City is having devastating effects on renters and wreaking havoc on the character of existing neighborhoods. This animated video tells the "real true-life tragedy" of apartment renters through clever cut-out picture animation and claymation art. A parallel story reveals a massive, historic, but widely unknown Anti-Rent Rebellion in which 20,000 New York State tenants organized against their landlords in the 1800's, and WON!

Ending the Lines, Henry Ferrini, 8:46 min, video, 1997
In 1997, the Housing Authority in Fall River, Massachusetts opened its waiting list to distribute applications for Section 8 rental asstance. This video is about the hundreds of people, including many young mothers and elderly people, that stood in line for hours just to get on the waiting list.

Suits and Savages, Dylan Howitt & Zoe Young, Conscious Cinema, 38 min, video
This video looks at a GEF/World Bank "ecodevelopment" project from the ground up - travelling between one remote tribe in India and another, more powerful, in Washington D.C. Spanning the gulf between their environments, the film features an emotional "video letter" from forest-dwellers to the world bank, and a bank resource economist's response.

Art Strikes Back, Directed by Gordon Winiemko (Produced by Lise Swenson and Megan Wilson), 10min, video, 2001
In the summer of 2000, a group of artists, faced with an enforced 'strike' brought on by the encroaching ersatz new economy, decided to strike back -- this videotape chronicles the ensuing dance, theater, music, and mayhem that took place right on the streets of one of culture and community's last and most endangered strongholds, The Mission district of San Franciso.

Home, Marilyn Bull, 1:44, video, 2001, 1993
This videomaker feels that sometimes the demons of the housing crisis are over-simplified, so this video simply addresses the grief and sense of loss experience which is felt both on a personal and community level. This video is dedicated to all those who've come to grief due to the Bay Area's current plague of greed and panic.

Housing and Justice in the Western Addition, The People's Video Network, 28:30, video, 1995
It's the mid 90's, just a couple of years before the dot com invasion and Local residents and community organizers struggle to keep their neighborhood from being displaced from Hayes Valley in this in depth chronicle on the affordable housing struggle.

Delivered Vacant, Nora Jacobson, 118 min, video, 1993
"Delivered Vacant," an eight-year chronicle of housing gentrification in Hoboken. An intricate and deeply human portrait of the city and the people that lived there, the film went on to play at the New York Film Festival, Sundance, and the San Francisco Film Festival where it garnered a Golden Gate Award. In the doc, Jacobson captured all sides of the real estate struggle with an equally intelligent and wry eye, from eccentric politicians and naive developers, to Hoboken natives and newly transplanted yuppies.

For more information about the individual films and videos, please click on the titles above.

For more information about the festival, please contact us at:
Bulldozed! Film & Video Festival
c/o Media Alliance
814 Mission Street, Ste. 205
SF CA 94103
(415) 430-2160 x 2947
info@videoactivism.org

(updated 25/FEB/04)