Documenting Urban Change: Gentrification, Representation, and Living Los Sures

Abstract

The 1984 documentary Los Sures is a portrait of the poverty-stricken Puerto Rican neighborhood of South Williamsburg, Brooklyn. In 2014, the Brooklyn-based documentary nonprofit UnionDocs re-released this little-seen film, along with a host of new multimedia content. The project, titled Living Los Sures, is alternatively a statement on the neighborhood’s radical transformation and an appeal to a sense of community and continuity. This essay engages the politics and esthetics of such an undertaking through the lens of both documentary-film studies and critical geographic perspectives on gentrification. I argue that while Living Los Sures betrays a flawed liberalism consistent with much documentary filmmaking, it nevertheless offers a unique vantage point onto the spatiotemporal imaginary of the contemporary city. I trace the original film and its re-issue against New York City’s recent history and contend that this project illuminates questions of political solidarity and representation in the neoliberal era.