From warehouse to penthouse, Living Hackney Wick

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London. Ten years after Olympia, Like many people in Hackney Wick, Pete is confronted with gentrification and the resulting exorbitant rents. The essay gives an intimate insight into a fate that is universally personal and shows that, under the conditions of the rental market, the choice of where to live is a privilege of those who can afford it financially. The expropriation of the neighbourhood is in full swing!

Press text:
"Gentrification" as a word and a fact was a rather English phenomenon for a pretty long time and has remained so in London until today: since that time around 1900 when the centre of the British Empire expanded to become the largest city in the world at that time. Global London prides itself on being the only metropolis today where people from all countries of the world live. However, deindustrialisation, decolonisation and the accompanying multi-culturalisation have changed the character of the newer neighbourhoods much more than that of the central city.

The filmmaker Angelo Lüdin lived in East London for a quarter of a year and roamed through Hackney with camera and microphone on the trail of gentrification projects such as the overblown construction of the 2012 Olympic Stadium. Following the footsteps of the lifelong survival artist Pete Bennett (55), Lüdin tracks down the most vital cultural biotopes in niches, terrains vagues and interim uses. In the process, he makes it clear that the promises of long-term neighbourhood upgrading must come across to some residents only as the announcement of a creeping expropriation.

Lüdin creates an unflinching view of a neighbourhood community with little money and a lot of culture that defies both marginalisation and gentrification. This is a small masterpiece of watching, listening, snooping, observing and also carefully taking part.