De Kinderen van Amsterdam

A short documentary exploring the UK’s 1970s approach to urban renewal through General Improvement Areas. Mixing location footage from Blackburn, Norwich, and Oxford with unexpectedly quirky presentation, the film contrasts small-scale housing improvements with the sweeping redevelopment schemes of the post-war era. Produced as a government public information film and shown at meetings between planners, architects, and residents, it stands as a modest, humane entry in Britain’s civic-minded documentary tradition.

Caged. Invisible. Shamed. Trapped. These words mark the tenants, clerks and even the owners of Chicago's last remaining Singe Room Occupancy (SRO) hotels. These small spaces are home for many at the bottom of Chicago's housing ladder. Cloaked in darkness and secrecy, these hotels are often maligned as drug dens and havens for prostitution but the people who live, work and own these hotels have never fully shared their stories. Caged Men is a feature-length documentary which examines the disquieting stories of near-homeless Americans living on the margins and their invisibility in a largely indifferent and, at times, hostile community. It attempts to lend a voice to SRO residents, clerks, owners and to the hotels themselves.

When Tomoko finds some messages for a 'Mr Smith' on a lost mobile phone, she finds herself on an 'Alice in Wonderland' journey through Tokyo's boulevards and back alleys. From the tyranny of symmetry in soaring office blocks - to buildings that look like space-ships, this creative documentary shows us the city's soul.

Documentary about fashion designer Fong Leng.

“Shellmound” is the story of how one location was transformed from a sacred center of pre-historic cultures to a commercial mecca for modern people. What began as a Native American burial ground three thousand years ago, was transformed first into an amusement park, and later an industrial age paint factory. Now, the tainted ancient soil sits beneath the glittering lights of Banana Republic, Victoria’s Secret, and the AMC movie theaters. “Shellmound” examines the decisions made during the recent toxic cleanup, excavation, and construction of the Bay Street mall through the eyes of the city of Emeryville, the developer, the archaeologists, and the native Californians who worked on the site.

As France's first ZAC (Zone d'Aménagement Concerté, or concerted development zone), Grigny is the ideal place to describe how France transformed its dream of a happy suburb into an impoverished urban nightmare. The film aims to leave the camera rolling throughout the story, to discover the inhabitants and the labyrinths of yesterday and today, and to answer the essential questions. From the residents to the architects, including the city of Grigny, the mayor, the prefect, the landlords, and the ANRU (National Agency for Urban Renewal), the film examines and deciphers the consequences of what happened in Grigny and the state's housing policy. Through the analysis of Grigny's history, we see how the state has participated and continues to participate in the creation of social exclusion.

Every day, Catherine feeds and cares for the pigeons in Place Beaubourg, under the curious gaze of the passersby.

Nigella returns for a very special Christmas treat when she travels to Amsterdam to enjoy the festive season in the Venice of the North.

FENEEN is a journey into Senegal's urban music scene. This project was born from the meeting of Italian producer Frank Sativa with Senegalese pop-star Leuz Diwane G and Italian-Senegalese rapper F.U.L.A. This gave rise to a song, a video clip and a documentary with the same name (Feneen). Feneen portrays the current urban and music subculture of Dakar suburbs. The documentary highlights the fundamental rule of the urban subculture in debunking the stereotypical image of the African continent.

Since the end of World War II, one of kind of urban residential development has dominate how cities in North America have grown, the suburbs. In these artificial neighborhoods, there is a sense of careless sprawl in an car dominated culture that ineffectually tries to create the more organically grown older communities. Interspersed with the comments of various experts about the nature of suburbia

A merger of megastar music. Discover the story of multi-genre performer and fashion promoter, Beyonce Knowles sand the world's first hip hop billionaire, Jay-Z.

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Toronto filmmaker Charles Officer profiles the young people of Villaways Park, a housing project on brink of historic change.

Rhythmic composition of moving photographs of cyclists in Amsterdam, ‘set’ to Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.

Johan van der Keuken went against the grain in 1980: from Amsterdam (on April 30 with the coronation riots and squatting actions) via Paris, southern France and Italy to Egypt. He made his personal travelogue in three parts for VPRO television. Later, he fused the three parts into one long movie.

Presents a day in the life in Amsterdam, a city in transformation, captured shortly after the turn of the millennium, and shortly before the digital revolution would speed up the pace of life considerably. Shot in a fly-on-the-wall style.

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Jugaad is a Hindi word that can be translated as "innovative or effective solution that bends the rules". It refers to the extreme capacity developed by Mumbai's inhabitants to adapt and get around any type of constraint or obstacle posed by the city's urban structure. In a relatively small piece of land where 21 million people live today, the inhabitants of Mumbai demonstrate great creativity when it comes to managing the spaces (for sale, for prayer, for traffic) and the flows that cross them every day. Without using language, Hong Kong artist Chak Hin Leung brings together in this video a dozen unique situations in which people, animals, vehicles and natural elements intermingle and brush up against each other, without ever colliding.

Pak Mokum Terug is the name of a group of Amsterdam activists that refuse to accept that the basic right to housing no longer appears to apply. The group’s name means “Take Back Amsterdam,” Mokum being the traditional nickname for a capital city in which today, for more and more people, a home is becoming unaffordable. Against this background, Hotel Mokum reports on the squatting of a dilapidated hotel in the city center, narrated in the voice of a fictitious activist.

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