Dear Babylon (Ayo Akingbade, 2019) (Patreon)

This is British filmmaker Ayo Akingbade's third film in a trilogy about social housing. I have only seen the first film in the series, Tower XYZ (2016), which is considerably more abstract and impressionistic that Dear Babylon. They are clearly related to one another, but they are very different films with considerably different agendas. Tower XYZ is a poetic portrait of life in a council tower, whereas the new film is a self-reflexive semi-documentary, partly about the citizens who will be displaced from London if gentrification efforts succeed in eradicating public housing, but also about the role that art itself has to play in effective political struggle.

The film begins with a group of young art students having a party. They are stiffly engaging in political chitchat, primarily discussing possible passage of AC30, a housing bill that would force residents out of council housing, clearing the way for private developers to acquire prime real estate in central London. Upon learning that the bill has passed, the students decided to make a documentary profiling some of the residents of their tower block, showing the impact this bill will have on their lives.

There is a deliberate stiffness to the performances Akingbade coaxes from her young cast, signaling to the viewer that we are watching a Brechtian, didactic piece of agitprop. Dear Babylon's awkward use of framing and lack of camera movement recalls the later, narrative work of artists like Isaac Julien and Ngozi Onwurah, other experimental Brits who employed reductive means to signpost the idea of narrativity more than occupying it entirely.

From there, the film moves on to interview several residents of the housing project, people who appear to be playing themselves. There is also an unexpected excursus on utopian architecture and the design of public housing in the 1960s and 70s. None of this completely fits together, but one gets the sense that Akingbade is aiming for a rough, somewhat desultory document. In the final shot, we see the main student in the group label a disc with the film's title and set it aside, letting us know that she has made the film we have just watched. Will it make a difference to the current housing politics? I suppose that remains to be seen.