Plot Summary:When aggressive developers purchase a crumbling flophouse hotel, to turn it into an arts and music hot spot, long-time staff and residents worry they'll be squeezed out. The developers' plan--a gradual restoration seeing staff and residents remain upstairs while the bar serves designer drinks to affluent clientèle downstairs--doesn't work. An experimental filmmaker, inherits the mess and forms a "business model that includes social change," but the hotel has the last word. City inspectors demand complete rewiring, the boiler blows up, ceilings leak, walls crumble and everybody's got to go. Shot over five years in a cinema direct style, this intimate and compelling portrait of the effects of urban renewal upon the poor, reveals the unintentional roles we often play in gentrification.
几个发展商买下了一间超过100年历史但摇摇欲坠的酒店,但当他们准备将其这间改造成一间潮流,艺术和音乐的圣地的时候。一系列麻烦接锺而来。 开始他们以为酒店是空的,后来他们才发现里面还住着一群混杂的房客,包括性格友善以拾垃圾为生的老太太,原来在酒店工作的工作人员和房客。有些在这里已经住了三十多年。 发展商们只好循序渐进的进行改造,让原住居民仍可以继续在楼上生活,楼下的酒吧则开始用新潮的饮品吸引新的嬉皮士顾客。实验电影导演开始在这里实现“包容社会责任的商业模式” 不过,这时城市建筑部的检查员又要求整个重装酒店的电线。最后取暖器烧了,酒店没有暖气,天花板漏水,墙壁皱裂,所有的人都得离开了。 这是一部超过五年的拍摄时间的影片。