Synopsis
Clay quarries deserted due to unpaid property loans, Spanish bricks embody the economic triumph and failure of a country. Factories that are shut half the year, a ghost city curiously inhabited, a working-class war against the expropriations orchestrated by banks: following the path of merchandise – bricks – gives a face to the crisis and outlines the individual and collective strategies that enable us to overcome it.
A word from Tënk
A natural companion to our Keeping the Roof program, Bricks demonstrates the economic, social and environmental repercussions of the Spanish housing crisis with a sensitive, pedagogic and wholly original approach. The film is surprising in its ability to cleverly assemble different complementary facets of the issue. With its specific narrative intelligence, this documentary transports us into a brick factory where an endless array of products are assembled on the line, then to a grassroots association fighting against the eviction of tenants caught in a stranglehold by debt, and finally to a modern “ghost neighbourhood” abandoned by its entrepreneurial developers who fell victim to the real estate bubble. The failure of this half-completed project is presented as a painful demonstration of the importance of thinking critically about where we live, rather than seeing all land as fertile ground for senseless development motivated primarily by short-term profits.
Hubert Sabino-Brunette
Teacher and programmer
