'Flag Wars' is a moody documentary that vividly shows controlled urban chaos, racism, homophobia and class conflict without self-consciously making judgments; the viewer does that.
The film is concerned with the gentrification of a historic downtown Columbus, Ohio neighborhood that had once been designated a black ghetto. It's a familiar story: people want to move back downtown from the suburbs, back to trendy areas where the so-called 'action' is. The previously much-avoided ghetto has become prime (and profitable) real estate.
In this film, we see and hear the insufferable, bourgeois ramblings of these gentrifiers (investment is the meaning of life) at dinner parties. There is a hard-ass lesbian realtor, who shifts between colonial language about blacks to praise for unbridled capitalism to thoughtful (albeit tipsy) insights about rapacious gentrification (the woman harbours a secret guilty conscience).
The film offers wonderful portraits: Linda, confused, overwhelmed and emotionally disturbed; a black Yoruba priest fighting for the right to use his house as a makeshift museum; elderly blacks who are bewildered by the dramatic shifts in their neighborhood; and exasperated, God-like Judge Pfeiffer, besieged by a blizzard of zoning laws, upon which he must pass judgment and attempt (impossibly of course) to make everyone happy.
Some reviewers have called this a film about discrimination against lesbians and gay men. But they are the primary gentrifiers in this film, so sexual orientation should be a non-issue. These men and women were profiteers (often obnoxiously so), and to categorize them as 'victims' is to avoid the obvious: they exploit the lower levels of society, and that's no different than the legions of heterosexuals who do the same.
I was disturbed by this film, and that's a good thing. A documentary that disturbs has done its job.
The film is concerned with the gentrification of a historic downtown Columbus, Ohio neighborhood that had once been designated a black ghetto. It's a familiar story: people want to move back downtown from the suburbs, back to trendy areas where the so-called 'action' is. The previously much-avoided ghetto has become prime (and profitable) real estate.
In this film, we see and hear the insufferable, bourgeois ramblings of these gentrifiers (investment is the meaning of life) at dinner parties. There is a hard-ass lesbian realtor, who shifts between colonial language about blacks to praise for unbridled capitalism to thoughtful (albeit tipsy) insights about rapacious gentrification (the woman harbours a secret guilty conscience).
The film offers wonderful portraits: Linda, confused, overwhelmed and emotionally disturbed; a black Yoruba priest fighting for the right to use his house as a makeshift museum; elderly blacks who are bewildered by the dramatic shifts in their neighborhood; and exasperated, God-like Judge Pfeiffer, besieged by a blizzard of zoning laws, upon which he must pass judgment and attempt (impossibly of course) to make everyone happy.
Some reviewers have called this a film about discrimination against lesbians and gay men. But they are the primary gentrifiers in this film, so sexual orientation should be a non-issue. These men and women were profiteers (often obnoxiously so), and to categorize them as 'victims' is to avoid the obvious: they exploit the lower levels of society, and that's no different than the legions of heterosexuals who do the same.
I was disturbed by this film, and that's a good thing. A documentary that disturbs has done its job.