Expected Guest: Director Dan Goldes and subjects from the film; emcee Karen Topakian, Greenpeace
2019 Green Fire Award Finalist
5 Blocks follows the transformational changes that have been taking place on San Francisco’s central Market Street for decades. Once a thriving urban center, the neglected neighborhood has been overcome by grime and crime. Now being transformed by a tech and real estate boom, the neighborhood is undergoing its most dramatic change in 50 years.
Interweaving cinema vérité scenes, interviews with 16 individuals, and archival film and photos, 5 Blocks reveals the challenges of attracting new, wealthy residents and workers to an area with a 50-year history of housing and serving a very poor population. Everyone involved wants to see less crime, cleaner streets, and an end to open drug use. But the needs of the existing population – inexpensive stores and restaurants that serve as gathering places for those who live in tiny subsidized hotel rooms and consider the street an extension of their living space – are often in conflict with the trendy, high-end places favored by the young tech workers.
www.5blocksproject.com
This SF Green Film Festival program is dedicated to the memory of Robert Cortlandt.
Media Partner:
Dan Goldes is a San Francisco documentary filmmaker whose films have screened at over 100 film festivals worldwide. His recent work includes Arrested (Again) (SFGFF 2017) and Keeper of the Creek (SFGFF 2019). His first feature film 5 Blocks is supported through a residency at the Ninth Street Independent Film Center.
Robert Cortlandt (1958 – 2016) was an award winning photographer, filmmaker and media artist. He was the recipient of a Prentice and Paul Sack Award for Outstanding Photography as well as a recipient of a year-long residency at the Ninth Street Independent Film Center.