Black Film

Intimate true stories from St Kilda's Gatwick Private Hotel. Meet the incredible characters including sisters Rose and Yvette who dedicated their lives to caring for the forgotten.

Catchy mix of farce and documentary. Portrait of a Berlin theatre company made up entirely of the homeless, alcoholics and junks. They call themselves ‘rats’ and take the film over to have a party.

Award-winning documentary maker Bryan Bruce investigates New Zealand's housing crisis and what might be done to solve it. Bruce consults with recognised world experts (in Canada, Ireland and Germany) to discuss their global research – this time on foreign capital and housing affordability and the effect of immigration on house prices. Bruce also looks at some of the many possible solutions (available particularly in Germany) that would provide families with stability of tenure that don’t involve private ownership.

HOMELESS is a documentary that humanizes unhoused people and explores their backgrounds, dreams and struggles to find the way home. The film aims to raise awareness and funds to end homelessness, which is an ever more urgent global challenge: The United Nations Human Settlements Program estimates that 1.6 billion people live in inadequate housing, and the best available data suggests that more than 100 million people have no housing at all.

Homeless man Robert (Bobby) Webb discovers the art of filmmaking, turning pages of his life into a heartfelt reel. Through his journey he finds hope and new meanings in unexpected aspects of his life as he relives them.

Three homeless teenagers brave Chicago winters, the pressures of high school, and life alone on the streets to build a brighter future.

In January 2011 Paul Crane discovered a tent city in downtown St. Louis, along the Mississippi River. He was curious as to who these people were, how they ended up there, and what life was like for them each day. He initially thought he would simply go down during the day and capture footage when possible, but he quickly realized that if he wanted to truly capture how these people lived and the full reality of their collective and individual existence, he would have to be there full time and become a part of the place, so he moved in with them.

Poignant stories of homelessness on the West Coast of the US frame this cinematic portrait of a surging humanitarian crisis.

In the district of Kristineberg in Stockholm there is an abandoned hotel that the young film makers Roxane and Moa often pass by. In believing that the hotel is empty, they take the camera and go there, but it turns out to be temporary accommodation for about fifty people. Instead, it becomes a film about rootlessness, addiction and dreams of a regular home with potted plants in the windows.

This documentary about teenagers living on the streets in Seattle began as a magazine article. The film follows nine teenagers who discuss how they live by panhandling, prostitution, and petty theft.

A homeless man living in a encampment in Minneapolis tells his perspective on the ongoing crisis of homelessness.

Max Ramsey, an advocate for those experiencing poverty, uses what he has gone through to serve the impoverished community of Milwaukee despite internal struggles and disapproval from the city.

Americans of various walks of live share their experience of schizophrenia.

A hotel in the centre of town is a war-time home and refuge for many of Sarajevo's homeless people. Every morning they leave the hotel and wander around the destroyed city gathering again at the defunct hotel in the afternoon. This film follows their separate fates through the bitter comparing of images of the bums with those of dogs abandoned by their owners and now left et the mercy of the war ravaged streets of Sarajevo.

Just as the original hobos of the early 20th century were scorned the mainstream of society, so too are today's train riders. FREELOAD is a dive into a beggar's existence. It is a ride through America's backyard. It is a musical endeavor that feels like a drama. It is a sociological examination of the ignored.

The UN estimates street children worldwide at 150 million. In Latin America, they are 40 million. In Brazil, street boys and girls felt so enchanted by a camera that they took it as their own to express themselves and fight the silence.

Following director Rotimi Rainwater, a former homeless youth, as he travels the country to shine a light on the epidemic of youth homelessness in America.

Street Life documents the lives of Chinese migrants in Shanghai, one of the world’s largest and most vibrant cities, now symbolic of China’s economic might. The film centers on Nanjing Road, one of China’s oldest commercial streets and today a popular destination for tourists and moneyed Chinese. The street has also become a Mecca for uprooted and homeless Chinese, who make ends by collecting garbage and recyclables. These characters and their stories are the focus of the film. The central character in Street Life is a migrant known as “Black Skin.” Black Skin faces numerous pressures in the course of the film, including police violence. In the end, these pressures are too much for him to bear and he goes mad. Black Skin’s story intersects with those of fellow bottle collectors, enterprising thieves and even a young boy who has been abandoned.

In the picture-postcard community of North Vancouver, filmmaker Murray Siple follows men who have turned bottle-picking, their primary source of income, into the extreme sport of shopping cart racing. Enduring hardships from everyday life on the streets of Vancouver, this sub-culture depicts street life as much more than stereotypes portrayed in mainstream media. The films takes a deep look into the lives of the men who race carts, the adversity they face, and the appeal of cart racing despite the risk.

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