PUSHBACK Talks
Landlords without faces, apartments without tenants. In 2019, filmmaker Fredrik Gertten released Push, an award-winning documentary that explores the unaffordable, unlivable city, and the growing global housing crisis. Following the Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, Leilani Farha, the film sought to understand why cities around the world are becoming increasingly expensive.
In June of 2020, Fredrik and Leilani teamed up again to continue the conversation they began with the film, and PUSHBACK Talks was born. Since then, PUSHBACK Talks has grown into an exploration of the social, political, and economic forces that shape our world, and of the actions people are taking to push back against inequality, corruption, authoritarian systems, poverty, war, and the shift towards far-right conservatism.
Join the Filmmaker (Gertten) and the Advocate (Farha) as they dissect these topics, uncover the connections between them, and search for solutions. How can we, as individuals, movements, and communities, fight back – push back – to build societies where every human being has the right to live equally, freely, and with dignity?
Listen to PUSHBACK Talks and join the conversation for a better, fairer world.
For more about PUSH and to view it: www.pushthefilm.com
For more about Leilani Farha and her organization, The Shift: www.make-the-shift.org
For more about Fredrik Gertten and his other films: www.wgfilm.com
If you are interested in watching his newest documentary: www.breakingsocialfilm.com
PUSHBACK Talks
Bulldozed Out: The People's Fight for Land and Homes in Kenya
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It's been over 7 years since the Jubilee Party of Kenya set out the ambitious Big Four Agenda to address affordable housing, affordable healthcare, food security, and manufacturing. As part of this ambitious plan, the City of Nairobi aimed to deliver 1 million housing units by 2022, with that number later being lowered to 500,000 to make the goal more attainable.
But now, all these years later and more than halfway to the Big Four deadline of 2030, barely 9,000 units have been built. The government has done little to address the shortfall or to rebuild the confidence of Kenyan citizens that they can accomplish the task. At the same time, residents of informal settlements are being evicted en masse to make way for new development, sometimes tens of thousands of people at a time.
Fredrik and Leilani meet with Pauline Vata, founder, and lead lawyer at Pauline Vata & Associates Advocates, an expert in public policy advocacy, and former Executive Director of Kenyan human rights organization Hakijamii, to talk about informal settlement evictions, the importance of comprehensive domestic law in realizing the right to housing, and how more Kenyans are becoming empowered to fight for adequate housing.
To learn more about Pauline's work, check her out on Twitter @VataPauline.