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Issues which concern a local neighbourhood can actually be a global concern too affecting neighbourhoods around the world. Films which reflect local citizens problems in one community can be a source for learning paralleling the experiences of another community in another country. For movie fans, shifting from viewing stars and glamorous Hollywood or Bollywood movies, to viewing themselves and other ordinary people, can be a grounding experience. These movies are not for fantasy and escapism but more educational and realistic. Regent Park is known as a poor neighbourhood with a lot of new immigrants and government subsidized public housing. This annual film festival shows the films inside the Nelson Mandela public school auditorium with discussions after. This year the theme was on 'relocation and Olympics' in China which displaced a lot of poor people from their homes to make way for the international games. Relocating poor people from prime properties happens in downtown areas which are decaying to make room for new modern condo developments. Sometimes, the transformation is positive because old residents are allowed to move into the new buildings in subsidized units mixed with those sold in the commercial market. Jobs are also created in the community and the land values increase with the property development. There were several public housing buildings in Regent Park which were demolished recently, upsetting the tenants but city and developers won the battle. Hopefully, the new buildings will benefit the old tenants along with the new. Around the world, any new development will benefit whoever moves into it but often the old tenants are too poor to buy in so the government has to ensure that certain units are allotted for subsidized public housing. The global economy is down right now that even middle class and rich are constrained by budget cuts and layoffs, and the poor as usual suffer the most if without help from government aid. There are many films about poverty and even First World industrialized countries like Canada and USA have documentaries of groups on welfare, and the Third World developing agricultural countries in Asia and Middle East also have documentaries showing the struggles of the poor workers and unemployed. Film festivals are a way of sharing these struggles around the world. Eventually the developers may address these economic struggles and build to help alleviate the economic suffering of the old groups displaced by the new.
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