Movie at: http://www.creativecapitalistcity.org/
Creativity is fancy, glamorous and desirable. Who can be against creativity? At the same time it is used selectively or economic purposes and consists of precarious and hard work. In this film, the search for creativity is linked to existential struggles for affordable housing and working space in Amsterdam, such as temporary accommodation, squatting, anti-squatting and some institutional synthesis: “breeding places” Amsterdam.
This film is more than a local documentary on Amsterdam. It explores the latest urban re-/development pattern in advanced Western capitalist cities. The hype around the creative city began already a decade ago, it is global in scope and about to reach its peak. After Richard Florida’s influential book “The Rise of the Creative Class” (2002) creativity has advanced to be the role model of urban regeneration:
The New American Dream.
What is new about this dream? What happens when the hype is over? Housing as a job or the Right to the City?
featuring economic geographer Jamie Peck
University of British Columbia
It now includes 4 different subtitles:
polish by: Tomek Grzeschik, Bozena Grzeschik
dutch by: Jasper Overweg, Christian Zuidema
italian by: Giuseppe Carta, Lorenzo Tripodi
german by: Anne Großkurth, Tino Buchholz
written and directed by: Tino Buchholz
director of photography: Benjamin Bischof
edited by: Dominik Wulf
music: Toralf Kampe alias modal.
cover design: Anne Büttner
web design: Stefan Baier
Susan Fainstein, Harvard University:
“This recent film captures the tensions in cities. Whereas once edgy, Bohemian elements were seen as unproductive parts of the urban milieu, since the publication of Richard Florida’s book, The Rise of the Creative Class, they are regarded by public officials and property interests as stimuli for later investment and thus the progenitors of gentrification. The result is that formerly low-cost areas quickly become fashionable and expensive, forcing out the very people who originally made them appealing… ‘Creativity and the Capitalist City’ offers a combination of first-hand responses and more abstract analyses to the changes occurring in Amsterdam as a consequence of the municipality’s commitment to becoming a creative city”
Alex Schafran, the polis blog:
“Few would argue that the city is not becoming more middle- and upper-class, more bourgeois, more glass and steel, more corporate money. Buchholz captures incredibly well the angst this transformation has engendered among housing activists and artists, both of whom struggle with perhaps having been co-opted through anti-squatting and “creative class” policies that favor creative types but leave little space for the broader working masses” http://www.thepolisblog.org/2011/11/film-review-creativity-and-capitalist.html
For reviews and further info + bonus material please see the website: http://www.creativecapitalistcity.org/
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