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New Doc <em>Class Divide</em> Examines Gentrification In Chelsea
By
Emma Whitford
Published Nov 14, 2015
Modified Nov 16, 2015
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By
Emma Whitford
Published Nov 14, 2015
Modified Nov 16, 2015
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Tenth Avenue between 25th and 26th Streets in West Chelsea is the backdrop for a new HBO documentary about two sides of the same city street. On the west side is Avenues: The World School, where parents pay $50,000 a year to prepare their children for what one administrator describes as an "international life." The NYCHA-run Elliott-Chelsea houses are on the east side.
As one Avenues student puts it, "You may just see an avenue between each block, but this gap is actually much larger than that."
In Class Divide, director Marc Levin follows the day-to-day of Avenues students and kids growing up in public housing, all of whom talk frankly about money—what it looks like in excess, the jobs they work to earn it, the pressure it puts on them to excel, and how, according to some of their parents, it's changed the neighborhood in a single generation.
"Most people work hard," says one of the subjects. "It's just, did the dice role correctly for you? Did you have that privilege awarded at birth, or did you not?"
New York City has the most segregated school system in the country, and recent plans to send students from overcrowded, predominantly-white public elementary schools to under-utilized majority-minority schools has thrown socioeconomic and racial segregation into stark relief from Downtown Brooklyn to the Upper West Side.
During a recent interview at the Hamptons International Film Festival, Levin said that he was inspired to make a film about gentrification in Chelsea while walking along the High Line. "Watching tourists taking photos in front of the empty frame looking out to 26th Street and 10th Avenue... it crystallized," he said.
Class Divide is showing once on Sunday and a second time as part of the ongoing documentary festival DocNYC, at 4:30 p.m. at the SVA Theater (rush tickets only, 10 minutes before the screening), and 7:15 p.m. at Bow Tie Chelsea Cinemas. You can get tickets for the festival showing here. The documentary premiers on HBO on February 8th.
Tagged
Chelsea
DocNYC
gentrification
Emma Whitford
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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