Invisible City

(Freeze frame taken from, "Invisible City" directed by Hubert Davis)

We waited for an hour in an impossibly long line - our fingers were numb from reaching in to various bags of candy and a large packet of Maltesers that we had purchased for this very reason. I didn't know much about the film we were about to see, only that it was a documentary on the revitalization of Toronto's Regent Park (an area with a ho-hum reputation and enough bad architecture to back that claim up). From the academic whisperings of the crowded lineup I could bet that this would be a very in depth look at the architecture that would soon create a new, thriving 'community' in the former slum; I was pleasantly surprised to find I could not have been more wrong about the director's intentions, and it made for an evening of shifting perspectives, core shaking revelations, and an internal debate about the varying moralities of architecture.

Davis' artful imagery forces one to experience the subtle beauty of this area and the people that make it - not the buildings. The story follows the lives of two youths who struggle through the day to day trials that have left a permanent stamp on their world. It tells of loss, uphill battles, and the realities that chase many of the young men of Regent Park. "In this community, manhood comes early...Being weak is not an option" (Ainsworth Morgan, Nelson Mandela Park Public School). It does this without intervention, without manipulation, and put simply - it tells the story like it is. It sets the lives of these youths, eerily amidst footage of Regent Park's demolition. The point that settled in my stomach and made my mind reel was that of scale; I kept picturing architects and planners working at a zoomed out scale, completely unaware of the individual lives that would be put in upheaval at each shifting location of the "Community Centre", inevitably represented as a little cube of foam on a 1:2000 scale model.

This was an absolutely exquisitely crafted film by Hubert Davis (obviously a recently graduated student with a whole intimidating load of talent). It is a must-see with hardly anything in it that warrants knit-picking. I can only say how grateful I am to Hot Docs for bringing it to us, and to the lovely Andrea for dragging me out to see it on a cold night with the added enticement of Maltesers and Sour Keys.