“One part of the contribution of the film was that these big screenings always generated discussions after the film. First of all people realized that this subject does affect a lot of people and a lot of people are interested in that subject, and the other thing is that within this discussion people talked about gentrification, they talked about what could be done, what kind of resistance would be effective or not .”
Interview with Irene Bude, Olaf Sobczak, Steffen Jörg, filmmakers of Empire St.Pauli, on strings of pearls and sending-offs about the gentrification process of the neighbourhood St. Pauli in Hamburg. Their latest film project Buy Buy St.Pauli is the continuation of the local neigbourhood struggle and speaks about the demolition of the ESSO-Buildings and the resistance of its tenants against it.
Barcelona, October 2011
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*Irene Bude, Olaf Sobczak (social workers and filmmakers) and Steffen Jörg (producer and organizer of GWA St. Pauli, which mostly financed the film) have been working and living in the neighborhood St. Pauli and have been strongly connected to the social protest movement that has grown in that area because of radical transformation of public space accomplished by the city government. GWA St. Pauli e.V. is an association founded in the 70’s as a student initiative to support homeless people and now is an established cultural centre in the district of St. Pauli.
