(Dis)placement: Fluctuations of Home Film Series (UCLA Film & Television Archive)
Screening Series Information
The UCLA Film & Television Archive and the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy presented (Dis)placement: Fluctuations of Home, screening July 13 to August 17, 2025. This film series explored the concepts of being housed and feeling at home amid ongoing displacement of communities from South Central Los Angeles to Palestine.
The screening series ran concurrently with an exhibit at the UCLA Arts Library, Home and Other Dislocations. An exhibit bibliography is available on the Library's website.
"(Dis)placement: Fluctuations of Home explores what it means to be housed — and to truly feel at home — in an age of ongoing displacement. In Los Angeles, where over 75,000 people are unhoused, neighbors and tenant organizers fight to preserve communities made vibrant by longtime residents. Spanning South Central Los Angeles to Palestine, this four-night series examines the fragile, shifting meaning of home — not just as shelter, but as identity, belonging and collective memory." – Associate Programmer Nicole Ucedo and Public Programmer Beandrea July
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Brick by Brick (dir. Shirikiana Aina, 1982)Brick by Brick is an unflinching documentary portrait of late-’70s Washington, D.C., where Black residents face displacement amid rising gentrification. Juxtaposing the iconography of national monuments with scenes of homelessness blocks away, the film highlights the Seaton Street project, a powerful example of tenant resistance. Nearly 40 years later, Shirikiana Aina’s debut remains a prescient testament to global struggles against displacement — and a reminder of who pays the price for so-called progress in the Chocolate City. -Public Programmer Beandrea July
United States, DCP, color, 37 min -
When It RainsU.S., 1995. On New Year’s Day, a man tries to help a woman pay her rent and learns a lesson in connecting with others in a community. Ayuko Babu, founding director of the Pan African Film Festival of Los Angeles, assumes the lead role in a pleasingly empathic reading. —Shannon Kelley
35mm, 13 min. Director/Screenwriter: Charles Burnett. With: Ayuko Babu, Florence Bracy, Kenny Merritt. -
We Are WyvernwoodThis collaborative film project between Diego Robles, LA Co-Media film collective and Wyvernwood Garden residents introduces the shared struggle of the Wyvernwood residents against displacement. Filmmaker and educator Diego Robles was invited to lead film education initiatives at Wyvernwood during the recession’s early days — as residents mobilized against demolition threats. Through this partnership, Robles guided and participated in creating short films honoring the vibrant community Wyvernwood residents are determined to protect. -Associate Programmer Nicole Ucedo. DCP, 7 min., in English and Spanish with English subtitles. Directors: Diego Robles, Abraham Osuna of Los Angeles Collective Media (LA Co-Media), Wyvernwood residents Roberto Mujíca and Gumaro Oviedo, the Los Angeles Conservancy. Producer: Karina Muñiz.
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Nuestros Videos Culturales para la Preservación de Wyvernwood (Our Cultural Videos for the Preservation of Wyvernwood)Erasto Arena documented the images seen in Nuestros Videos Culturales para la Preservación de Wyvernwood at a community gathering and procession. The footage was edited by Diego Robles with input from Arena, who wanted to convey the feeling of everything moving fast and slow at the same time. For the residents of Wyvernwood, life does move at a rapid pace as they balance full-time jobs, raising children, organizing community events and resisting eviction and demolition. -Associate Programmer Nicole Ucedo. DCP, 4 min. Directors: Erasto Arena de Tejaluca Puebla, Comité de la Esperanza, Diego Robles of Los Angeles Collective Media (LA Co-Media).
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The Need for RootsAs a poet and organizer, Lupita Limón Corrales’ voice speaks loudly on the issues she and her Los Angeles community face. Lupita’s first film, The Need for Roots speaks on these issues too with visual words overlaid on footage captured from her window and the surrounding streets. Lupita’s images portray both beauty and destruction as she reflects on the changes in her Victor Heights home and neighborhood. -Associate Programmer Nicole Ucedo. DCP, 3 min. Director/Screenwriter: Lupita Limón Corrales.
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Razing Liberty SquareAs rising seas threaten Miami’s coast, developers turn inland to Liberty Square — a historically Black neighborhood and the South’s first segregated public housing — sitting 12 feet above sea level. Set where Moonlight was filmed, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Katja Esson’s “exposé of cynical impulses and failed promises” (Chicago Tribune) captures the six-year fight of residents battling displacement under a $300 million city “revitalization” plan. The film offers a timely warning and tribute to those refusing to bend to climate gentrification. See film website for more information. – Public Programmer Beandrea July. DCP, color, 83 min. Director: Katja Esson.
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MoonlightSet in Miami’s Liberty City, Moonlight was adapted from Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play about growing up Black and gay in a neighborhood marked by hardship and care. Also raised in Liberty City, filmmaker Barry Jenkins’ Oscar-winning film captures Chiron’s quiet, aching journey to selfhood across three chapters. Moonlight honors Miami’s textures and contradictions — its emotional power inseparable from Liberty City’s geography — and now stands as a vital record of this historic community now reshaped by climate gentrification and displacement. –Public Programmer Beandrea July. DCP, color, 111 min. Director: Barry Jenkins. Screenwriters: Tarell Alvin McCraney, Barry Jenkins. With: Mahershala Ali, Trevante Rhodes, André Holland, Janelle Monáe, Naomie Harris.
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Bye Bye Tiberiashrough present-day footage and family VHS archives, filmmaker Lina Soualem paints a lyrical, deeply personal portrait of four generations of women shaped by exile and longing. Soualem returns with her mother, actor Hiam Abbass (Succession), to their Palestinian village, where Abbass once took her swimming in Lake Tiberias “as if to bathe me in her story.” The film captures how its Arab women subjects carry history within them, even as the meaning of home constantly shifts beneath their feet. -Public Programmer Beandrea July. DCP, color, 82 min. Director: Lina Soualem. Screenwriters: Lina Soualem, Nadine Naous, Gladys Joujou. With: Hiam Abbass, Um Ali, Nemat Abbass.
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Measures of DistanceIn Measures of Distance, Mona Hatoum weaves letters from her mother in war-torn Beirut with layered images and voice, exploring exile, intimacy and the ruptures of forced separation. Born to Palestinian parents in Lebanon, Hatoum became an exile herself when civil war broke out during a visit to London. This tender, formally complex video challenges stereotypes of Arab womanhood while tracing fluctuating definitions of home — shaped by memory, longing and the distances that characterize displacement. –Public Programmer Beandrea July. DCP, color, 15 min. Director: Mona Hatoum.
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The InheritanceAfter nearly a decade exploring the African diaspora, Ephraim Asili makes his feature debut with this vibrant ensemble film, set almost entirely in a West Philadelphia rowhome where young Black artists and activists form a collective. “‘The Inheritance’ feels like poetry visualized,” writes Lovia Gyarkye in The New York Times. Blending scripted drama with documentary reflection on the 1985 MOVE bombing, the film reimagines home as a political and spiritual inheritance. . –Public Programmer Beandrea July. DCP, color, 100 min. Director/Screenwriter: Ephraim Aisili. With: Nozipho McClean, Eric Lockley, Chris Jarell, Julian Rozzell Jr., Debbie Africa.
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KindahShot in Hudson, New York, and Accompong, Jamaica, Kindah traces ancestral threads across the African diaspora, weaving a meditation on kinship, autonomy and return. Centered on the Kindah Tree — a living symbol of community among Jamaica’s Maroons — Ephraim Aisili explores how land, memory and resistance shape evolving definitions of home. Blurring borders between past and present, North and South, Kindah offers a lyrical reflection on displacement, rootedness and the spiritual geography of diasporic belonging. –Public Programmer Beandrea July. DCP, b&w and color, 12 min. Director: Ephraim Aisili.