Once a teeming hub for the first wave of West Indian migrants after World War II, Brixton is at risk of rapidly losing its identity
By Astrid Zweynert
LONDON, April 27 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Gentrification is not a monochrome tale of rich and poor, says filmmaker Shola Amoo, whose movie about sweeping change in one multi-cultural London district opens in British cinemas on Friday.
A mix of fiction and documentary, the film is built around the character of Brixton-born Nina, who returns to her old neighbourhood as a young actress after living elsewhere.
Nina finds many of the "greasy-spoon" cafes, fishmongers, Afro-Caribbean greengrocers and wig shops she treasured in her youth have made way for gourmet food stores, artisan coffee houses, fancy restaurants and luxury apartments.
The changes prompt her to create a video art project but as she films scenes and characters in Brixton, Nina is confronted by criticism from community leaders that artsy, middle-class people like her are part of the problem.
"She explores that complicity - and if we're honest we have to admit that most of us are complicit in gentrification," London-born Amoo told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
"We enjoy the choice of great food without thinking much about that the fancy new place serving it might have pushed out a stallholder who was there for decades. It's not just about the developers and the rich people pushing the locals out."
Amoo took inspiration for his debut feature film from the rapid changes in south London's property market that has seen property prices in Lambeth, the borough where Brixton lies, rise by more than 600 percent in the past 20 years.
Once a teeming hub for the first wave of West Indian migrants after World War II, Brixton is at risk of rapidly losing its identity, said Amoo, who grew up nearby.
"It will look like any other town centre - with brands taking over," said Amoo.
Keen to show that gentrification is an international issue - with property developers worldwide buying into rundown inner-city neighbourhoods - the film includes clips from New York and Berlin, cities that are experiencing similar urban change.
Amoo hopes the film will be a catalyst for change at a small, local level - and might help breathe life back into the small corner stores of his own childhood.
"Maybe everyone can make a start by thinking what we can do at a micro level, things like not always going to the shop that has everything, for example."
(Reporting by Astrid Zweynert @azweynert , Editing by Lyndsay Griffiths. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit http://news.trust.org)
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