Co-op Housing: The Best Move We Ever Made

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The World Health Organisation has revealed that Glasgow's wealthiest live on average 28 years longer than its most deprived inhabitants. Journalist Julien Brygo asked the wealthy how they interprate the poverty of their neighbors. A photographic movie.

Exemplary in its town planning and administration, Bologna has been transformed into a city that is avant-garde, both socially and culturally, yet still preserves its historical roots.

The human side of town planning, as exemplified in Baltimore, Maryland. The Coldspring Project concerned a proposed housing development for lower and upper income levels on a three hundred-acre site adjoining a wildlife sanctuary. The film records the differences aired in meetings of various interest groups that tried to modify the plan according to their views, and the compromise reached, based on plans drawn up by Montréal architect Moshe Safdie.

Too many stories can tell the horrible consequences of the housing crisis. Those of Jeannette and Frances make us feel the difficult experience of eviction. During long months of anguish, brief hopes and uprooting, Jeannette and Frances struggle, alone and surrounded, against a phenomenon that is becoming more and more pronounced: losing your home.

The documentary offers an overview of the district of Cidade Tiradentes and its inhabitants. It starts by the acquisition of land by the public authorities from the 1970s onwards, to the occupation of what is today one of the largest housing projects in Latin America.

Successfully completed your studies - now what? Raffly already has a lucrative job offer from a large German company, but neither an apartment nor a work permit.

Homelessness in the United States takes many forms. For Elizabeth Herrera, David Lima and their four children, housing instability has meant moving between unsafe apartments, motels, relatives’ couches, shelters, the streets and their car. After 15 years of this uncertainty, the family moved into their first stable housing — an apartment in the San Francisco Bay Area — in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

Du béton sur nos courgettes

Logement Etudiant : Mission Impossible

The Cooperative Movement in Barquisimeto (CECOSESOLA) emerged as an alternative to the outrages against the people and their inability to afford a decent burial for their relatives.

This short documentary film is a fascinating portrait of urban and rural Quebec in the late 1960s, as the province entered modernity. The collective work produced for the Quebec Ministry of Industry and Commerce calls on several major Quebec figures.

Because of the big housing problem in the US many people move into cheap, run down hotels, the so-called Flophouse hotels. Twelve-year-old Mikal was born and raised in a hotel room he shares with his parents, who struggle with substance abuse. Driven by love and a desire for a better life, his greatest wish is for his mother to stop drinking. Mikal is bright and articulate, but his parents’ struggles prevent them from giving him the stability he needs. Through Mikal’s perspective, the film paints an intimate portrait of resilience, hope, and the harsh realities of life on society’s margins.

Sundance award-winning director Julia Kwan’s documentary Everything Will Be captures the subtle nuances of a culturally diverse neighbourhood—Vancouver’s once thriving Chinatown—in the midst of transformation. The community’s oldest and newest members offer their intimate perspectives on the shifting landscape as they reflect on change, memory and legacy. Night and day, a neon sign that reads "EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE ALRIGHT" looms over Chinatown. Everything is going to be alright, indeed, but the big question is for whom?

A close-up of a snow-bound city, and the men, money and machinery it takes to dig it out.

Documentary devoted to the architectural and urban planning designs of Le Corbusier. The architect supports his in-depth reflection on the city and its necessary adaptation to modern life with plans, drawings and images, particularly Paris, whose revolutionary development dreamed of by Le Corbusier is exhibited here. Its first projects will remain at the stage of a model: the modernization plan for the city of Algiers. Some will be created by other architects: Ministry of Education in Rio de Janeiro, UN Palace in New York. From the post-war period in less than 10 years, Le Corbusier created large housing units in Marseille, Nantes, a chapel in Ronchamps, a factory in Saint-Dié, a town in Chandigarh in India. Through diagrams, the architect presents his theory of the "radiant city", the mathematical key modulor of his work as well as his project for reorganizing the countryside, industrial and urban cities into a grouping around a cooperative system.

Author and activist Jane Jacobs talks about the problems and virtues of North American cities.

“Set against the rattle of shopping carts and the white noise of L.A. traffic... “Disco’d” is an unvarnished, moving look at the lives affected by the rising crisis of homelessness.” —Los Angeles Times

Five floors. Forty apartments. Rats, leaks and debts. In Pantin, I live in a building with a danger order. Under court order, we have to renovate it. Between Dantesque arguments, missing money and humor as a fire extinguisher, I film our collective rescue.

This feature documentary takes a look at how the Halifax/Dartmouth community in Nova Scotia was stimulated by a week-long session held by a panel of specialists from different fields who met with members of this urban community to consider the future of the area and the responsibility of the citizens and government in planning the future.