‘We’ve been in Walthamstow/Nunhead/Clapton for years. Way before the boujis with their drip-filter coffees.’ Is there a more emotive issue in London than gentrification? None of us wants to admit we might be part of the problem. We move into an area, make it home and maybe claw a bit of moral high ground from the next richer, more hipster newcomers pushing up rents.
In this drama-doc-art film, director Shola Amoo does a brilliant job of getting under the skin of gentrification. A born and bred south Londoner, Amoo explores race, community and class in his home turf of Brixton. His artsy multimedia approach might be a bit of a turn-off if you’re expecting a straight-up drama. It’s told from the point of Nina (Tanya Fear), an artist who grew up in Brixton and is making a documentary about how the area has changed.
Her film-within-a-film features interviews with actual residents and there’s footage from the Reclaim Brixton march in 2015 (which made headlines when a few protesters smashed up a Foxtons). It’s too much to expect a crowdfunded film to have all the answers. But ‘A Moving Image’ gets beyond the clichés to ask big questions: how do you hang on to culture and diversity, create an area for everyone, and still manage to get a decent flat white