DPU short film competition
The DPU Short Film Competition provides students with the chance to share their field trip experiences with a wider community, and to communicate their reflections.
For a number of years we have been running the DPU short film competition for students. The films are meant to encapsulate some of the key DPU themes, and provide students with the chance to share their field trip experiences with a wider community, and to communicate their reflections.
"We are no longer squatters."
That's how one member of the Sitapra Panaghiusa Homeowners Association (SPHOA) describes what years of work and advocacy finally won them.
After years of demolition threats in Cebu City, these families were relocated to a forested hillside "with no water, no electricity, no houses". In the absence of state provision, residents sourced materials, built shelter, and organised the infrastructure of daily life through their own labour and collective effort.
In this short documentary directed by Rawa Zalkha and Jacqueline Holo, SPHOA's officers narrate that process and the conditions that remain unresolved.
The documentary came out of a research report we produced in collaboration with FORGE — a Cebu-based NGO that's spent nearly four decades organising alongside the city's urban poor — as part of the Overseas Practice Engagement at The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, UCL. Working with SPHOA members and officers, we traced their resettlement journey to understand why the conditions for a just resettlement remain unmet, and where the openings for change lie.
This work wouldn't have existed without FORGE and the SPHOA officers who shared their time, stories, and their homes with us. And the efforts of out DPU team members Silvia Allan, Charlotte Caldwell, Andrea Poletti, Wei-chung Chen, Wanfeng Chen, Jacqueline Holo, Avery Hu, Fardeen Chowdhury, Yuchen Xue, and Xi Chen.
Colombia as a country was riven with conflict until 2016, when a peace treaty was signed between the government and the paramilitary group FARC.
Millions escaping the violence moved to Bogotá but found it hard to make a living, and turned to restoring and regreening public spaces abandoned by the government. Working day in and day out for years, these Trabajadores Del Corazón (Workers of the Heart) created communal green spaces in a city plagued with high inequality and a lack of government services for the impoverished.
Not just simple backyard gardens, these spaces function as living proof that another way of life is possible, and all it needs is someone who cares, cares enough to imagine otherwise. There exists thousands of urban agricultural spaces in Bogotá now, but their existence is defined by precarity and no legal tenure to their land.
This is where we came in, as action-oriented researchers who documented their practices to provide them legitimacy in formal systems of governance through co-produced research. This documentary is an abridged version of one of these outputs. To have had the honour of helping tell someone else’s story, a story that holds so much pain, violence, grief, love, care, imagination and hope is an experience that will never, ever leave me.
I have been fundamentally changed by this experience, and my hope for you is to also give this documentary a chance, and sit with any uncomfortable feelings it might raise. If this sparks questions on how you lead your day to day and your own place in this complicated messy world, I will consider my first work as a storyteller a success.
Entrant name(s): Bennedictus Bagustantyo, Yidie Deng, Andres Orjuela Garcia, Natalie Knight-Griffin, Nisrina Fadhila, Paula Cano Paez, Qianqian Wang, Vishesh Mahnot, Yuanfang Lin, and Zining Li.
MSc Programme: Urban Development Planning
Location: Cebu City, Philippines
“Dinhi sa Yuta” – Here on Earth is an advocacy video that rethinks development, presents the grounded realities in Sitio Lower Mahiga and Upper Kalubihan, Cebu City, Philippines, as voiced by the community. They have resided on this high-value provincial government-owned land for over a hundred years, investing in shared infrastructure and fostering a culture of mutual care and solidarity. However, for the past six years, they have been experiencing manufactured vulnerability and slow displacement because of the no-repair policy imposed by the Cebu Provincial Government’s Office of Real Estate. Symbolically, the video title is borrowed from the lines of “Amahan Namo”, the Cebuano version of the Lord’s Prayer: “…Matuman ang imong pagbuot, dinhi sa yuta maingon sa langit…” (“…Your will be done [here] on earth as it is in heaven…”). Rooted in Catholic philosophy, it is a plea to align earthly actions with God’s perfect will, which is characterised by love, compassion, and justice. Ultimately, this video advocates for the “Right to Remain” – rooted in empirical realities, constitutional rights, Catholic social teaching, and a shared sense of humanity.
Entrants name(s): Ricardo Pérez-Restrepo, Diana Armacanqui, Nidhi Sohane, Katie Roberts, Si Chen, Hongyu Liu and Saixi Ding
Watch Faces of Sao Paulo: Poetics of Reparative Belonging
Entrants name(s): Alejandra Alvarez, Erin Martin, Juliana Posso, Kate Glasson, Miko Savitri, Naiwen Zhai, Parisa Dusitnanond, Qihang Gan, Seongju Ha, Xingyi He, Xinyi Huang
Msc UDP Group 3
Location: Cebu Philippines
Pathways to just resettlement: Perspective from residents in Cebu Alaska Mambaling
Watch Mandaue Group
Entrants name(s): Bethania Boaventura, Carlos Velasquez, Dana Snyder, Francisco Walker, Marie Pinna, Rim Abdallah, Tess Abdo, Sebastian Araus, Xiaotong Mo, Yerim Nam
MSc UDP Group 1
Watch Together we build our community: Notoyudan
Nawagampura - Diversity in a world Class city
Nawagampura Group
MSc Urban Development Planning Colombo, Sri Lanka
MSc Urban Development Planning Flooding Group
Video Credits: Amy Gastinger Amelia Neoh Anya Cardwell Catharina Degraeff Ester Bellod Cano Luis Hernán Saenz Maureen Muthoni Nicolas Smith Wu Gang Xige Liu Yao Yizhou
UDP Flooding Group - Flooding
Entrant name: David McEwen
Entrants name(s): Pedro Pablo Mora, Jose Manuel Ahumada, Laura Antona, Jessica Mamo, Chen Anderson Lee, Lucia Maffei, Giovanna Astolfo.
'Chamkar Samroung II: A City Tale' is the winner of the 2014 Student Film Competition at The Bartlett Develoment Planning Unit, University College London.
The short film is a mixture of stop-motion animation, and narration telling the story of one community in Cambodia and the challenges they face when confronted by different visions of planning in their city. Beyond just the case study it carefully explores and simply communicates, it offers insights into the formations of different partnerships, and community responses. The processes witnessed in Cambodia are not unique to this case, but can be seen elsewhere, replicated in many contexts across cities in the global south.
This group of students are all part of the MSc Building and Urban Design in Development. They visited Cambodia as part of an overseas fieldwork assignment for their Masters degree.
Watch Chamkar Samroung II - A City Tale
Entrants name(s): Fanny Frick, Nayani Nasa, Chika Ohashi, Santa Pedone, Mandira Thakur, Isaac Yieleh Chireh
Entrants name: Su-Ann Tan
Short glances of the 'slum' communities that live behind the walls of shophouse rows in Rattanakosin Island, (old city of) Bangkok. Though hidden, often with a small path to their world, the people there are eager to share their stories and traditional livelihoods.
Watch Behind the Walls
