Thomas Pendzel
2007 - France - Couleur - 58'
From the outside it was a normal building. One hundrerd and sixty-height one-room dwellings, inhabited by newly arrived immigrants to Paris. Mid-nineteenth century tenants were rural French, followed by Belgians, Italians, Eastern European Jews, Spaniards, Portuguese, repatriates, North Africans, Senegalese and finally Malians. By 1998, the building had become the largest slum house in Paris. Its three hundred and fifty occupants blocked the street four months with a protesting camp, the rundown tenement was bought and torn-down by city authorities. Tracking down vestiges of the tenement is like raising it from the rubble, inhabited by the testimonials of its inhabitants.
Photography : Thomas Pendzel, Thomas Bataille, Isabelle Bourzat
Sound : Gabrielle Fontaine
Editing : Joël Jacovella
Production : Grec (abeckmann@grec-info.com, +33 (0)1 44 89 99 99)
Distribution : Grec (abeckmann@grec-info.com, +33 (0)1 44 89 99 99)