The Design Series | Design Flicks - Push

We have teamed up with Richard Sowada, curator of Melbourne Design Week Film Festival, to bring us a sequence of international films that explore people, culture, the built environment and the way people operate in it.

The films dive deeply into the struggle between people and their environment, global forces that shape the way we live and the ongoing dilemma between the build and the natural. The journey is not just through design but the ideas and inspirations that synthesise great social, technological and political change.

The films will be live screened via VIMEO . Once registered via Eventbrite you will be sent a link to your email account with VIMEO login details. This will be sent on the day of the screening.

Push is a new documentary from award-winning director Fredrik Gertten, investigating why we can’t afford to live in our own cities anymore. Housing is a fundamental human right, a precondition to a safe and healthy life. But in cities all around the world, having a place to live is becoming more and more difficult. Who are the players and what are the factors that make housing one of today’s most pressing world issues?

This documentary sheds light on the global phenomenon of the commodification of housing and consequent lack of affordability, especially through the eyes of Leilani Farha, a United Nations special rapporteur on housing who lives in Canada.

She believes that if we really want to make change to ensure people can live in the city – all people; rich, middle and poor, brown, black and white, young and old – then we have to be able to hold someone responsible for what is going on. She wants to confront the very idea of what the experts call the “financialisation” of the housing market. “There’s a huge difference between housing as a commodity and gold as a commodity.