The Street

Worlds col­lide in pho­tog­ra­ph­er Zed Nelson’s debut fea­ture-length doc­u­men­tary which focus­es sole­ly on one of the poor­est streets in East Lon­don, Hox­ton Street, and its grad­ual gen­tri­fi­ca­tion over a four-year period.

The film opens on a sequence of still shots exhibit­ing a vari­ety of quaint restau­rants, pubs, bak­eries, garages and car­pet shops. The set­ting then swift­ly changes to a mid­dle-aged home­less man named Serge who sleeps under a bridge. He gets up and climbs up to the road, out of his real­i­ty and into the exas­per­at­ing strug­gle to sur­vive. Mean­while, shop own­ers open their doors in a par­al­lel effort to keep their heads above water in the rapid­ly chang­ing eco­nom­ic environment.

The film imme­di­ate­ly cul­ti­vates a strong sense of com­mu­ni­ty as born and bred locals proud­ly dis­cuss their deep roots in the area. As a result of gen­tri­fi­ca­tion, we see many of the beloved, anti­quat­ed shops close down, incit­ing an intense anti-change sen­ti­ment among the locals. The dras­tic increase in rent caus­es the poor to be pushed out. There are fights over coun­cil hous­ing, and when a new­ly arrived fam­i­ly is offered a place, the bit­ter­ness of the locals is immense.

Nelson’s ded­i­ca­tion to bal­ance is what makes The Street so com­pelling. It would have been very easy to por­tray cap­i­tal­ism and social change as the vil­lains, but in this film, the locals’ tox­ic, over­whelm­ing tra­di­tion­al­ism (and the racism that often dri­ves it) is also explored as part of the prob­lem. There is a bar­ri­er between the wave of new gen­er­a­tions – who, in a way, form a fresh com­mu­ni­ty albeit with lit­tle social aware­ness – fre­quent­ing chic art gal­leries and the more work­ing class locals queu­ing up for food in the cold, look­ing through the glass window.

Being born, liv­ing and dying in the same place, is an old-fash­ioned, dis­pens­able con­cept. Hox­ton street is chang­ing – it’s fierce, excit­ing, wild, sur­round­ed by con­crete sky­scrap­ers, pover­ty and opu­lence. All these ele­ments mud­dle togeth­er vie for space. Yet the social frame­work for an under-priv­i­leged young per­son grow­ing up in the area is a mil­lion years away from the urban hip­sters who vis­it the styl­ish bars on the same street.