A new film looks at gen­tri­fi­ca­tion from a fresh perspective

Young actress Nina is shocked when she returns to her native Brix­ton after a few years liv­ing in east Lon­don. Com­mu­ni­ties she once knew have been forced out, small busi­ness­es have closed to make way for ​“gourmet jerk chick­en shops”. Nina decides to make a film about Brixton’s gen­tri­fi­ca­tion, while exam­in­ing her own com­plic­i­ty as an now-trendy returnee. But at a research meet­ing, an activist is open­ly hos­tile towards her self-described ​“visu­al art project”. ​“Them kind of projects, they don’t mean shit. Not to real peo­ple,” he says to her obvi­ous dismay.

Is that activist right? Can films, no mat­ter how well-inten­tioned, real­ly make a dif­fer­ence? This is the crux of A Mov­ing Image, the fea­ture debut from 32-year-old direc­tor Shola Amoo. A south Lon­don­er of Niger­ian descent, Amoo admits that Nina’s neu­ro­sis is real­ly all his. ​“They are 100 per cent my thoughts on art – and are still my thoughts on art – in the face of social struc­tur­al upheaval,” he tells LWLies. ​“Art’s use­ful­ness to con­front gen­tri­fi­ca­tion, as well as art’s com­plic­i­ty in it, is a big ques­tion for me. My aim was to start a con­ver­sa­tion, but through facil­i­tat­ing that con­ver­sa­tion be a cat­a­lyst for some kind of broad­er change.”

This blur­ring of fic­tion and real­i­ty doesn’t end with Amoo’s proxy char­ac­ter. The direc­tor mix­es in footage of real-life protests and inter­views with locals into Nina’s fic­tion­al sto­ry arc. At one point Nina, played by Tanya Fear, solic­its video respons­es from peo­ple liv­ing in Harlem and oth­er Amer­i­can gen­tri­fi­ca­tion hotspots. These were real videos tak­en from Amoo’s online gen­tri­fi­ca­tion data­base on the film’s web­site

Amoo bills A Mov­ing Image as a mul­ti­me­dia film and believes that, ​“Cin­e­ma now has got to the point where the engage­ment isn’t just with the film. It’s part of the broad­er con­ver­sa­tion that takes place in the dig­i­tal space as well. Out­side the film there’s oth­er stuff you can engage with, like my data­base. You can take it onto social media and have dis­cus­sions with oth­er people.”

From Harun Faroc­ki to Ken Loach, film­mak­ers have long strug­gled to visu­alise the vast, invis­i­ble social struc­tures to make a film that ​“means shit”. A Mov­ing Image seems very much a mil­len­ni­al take on polit­i­cal film­mak­ing. Acute­ly aware of self-reflex­ive iden­ti­ty projects, and embrac­ing inno­v­a­tive mul­ti­me­dia, it focuss­es on the per­son­al as the polit­i­cal. ​“I want­ed to look at the indi­vid­ual rather than the coun­cil plan­ning and the devel­op­ment projects that hap­pen on the macro lev­el,” says Amoo. ​“In explor­ing our­selves and how we deal with struc­tur­al changes, there was more poten­tial to look at cul­tur­al nuances.”

A Mov­ing Image is adept at demon­strat­ing the slip­pery, neb­u­lous nature of gen­tri­fi­ca­tion. But like a hor­ror movie that nev­er reveals its mon­ster, the film doesn’t bring to light the root polit­i­cal and social caus­es of gen­tri­fi­ca­tion. The politi­cians fail­ing Brixton’s less afflu­ent res­i­dents, and the well-off new­com­ers enjoy­ing black cul­ture minus the black peo­ple, seem get off rel­a­tive­ly light­ly, despite the occa­sion­al kale joke.

Even after mak­ing this ambi­tious film, Amoo is hon­est about his ambiva­lence of film­mak­ing as a polit­i­cal force. ​“I’m still wait­ing to be shown the true pow­er of cin­e­ma,” he says. ​“I can’t say I’ve com­plete­ly seen it or under­stood ful­ly its full capa­bil­i­ties. That’s part of the jour­ney – the push-pull of what does it take for a film to be more than a film? That’s a ques­tion I’m still try­ing to answer.”

A Mov­ing Image screens at Ritzy Pic­ture­house, Brix­ton and Hack­ney Pic­ture­house on 28 April. The film will receive a wider release the fol­low­ing week.