A series of characters who have left their homeland, or their home town, spend their days and nights traversing the city of Brussels, searching for somewhere to live. Yet despite their best attempts, they repeatedly find themselves back where they started - humiliated, cheated, outside, and alone.
Gradually, the idea emerges that the only solution to their problems is to take democracy seriously and launch their own political party. Little do they suspect where their dream will lead them....
The film that bears this name had its roots in a series of collective writing workshops held during the winter of 2013–14. By inventing a fictional back story for the PHD, we were able to tie together many of the stories and scenes that emerged during those sessions. While none of the actors in the film plays “themselves”, all the situations that they enact for us are rigorously true to their collective experience of searching for somewhere to live, and often failing to find anything but public impotence and private criminality.
The Party of the Housing Dream, then, is an exercise in collaborative creation. The Groupe ALARM are collectively the authors of the film. The film was shot over a period of six months in 2015–16, in irregular bursts of activity, with a small professional crew. The dialogue was improvised before the camera, the storyline was constantly revised and rewritten as the production progressed, and the edit was progressively validated by the group as it proceeded. In this way, the film allowed the members of the Group to achieve the programme that Rahim sets out in the film’s final scene: “Instead of being just spectators, we ourselves have to become actors.”
LE PARTI DU RÊVE DE LOGEMENT un film du Group ALARM | BANDE-ANNONCE from CVB on Vimeo.
To purchase the DVD, or arrange a screening, go to: cvb.be.
Bonus track: Si j’étais bourgmestre...
2016, 69 minutes, HD, 5.1/stereo.
Produced by the Centre Vidéo de Bruxelles, in collaboration with La Maison de Quartier Bonnevie.