Flag Wars | POV

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PBS Premiere: June 17, 2003Check local listings »

Synopsis

Shot over a four-year period, Linda Goode Bryant and Laura Poitras' Flag Wars is a poignant and very personal look at a community in Columbus, Ohio, undergoing gentrification. What happens when gay white homebuyers move into a working-class black neighborhood? As the new residents restore the beautiful but run-down homes, black homeowners must fight to hold onto their community and heritage. The inevitable clashes expose prejudice and self-interest on both sides, as well as the common dream to have a home to call your own. Winner of the Jury Award at the South by Southwest Film Festival, Flag Wars is a candid, unvarnished portrait of privilege, poverty and local politics taking place across America. An Independent Television Service (ITVS) and National Black Programming Consortium (NBPC) co-presentation. A Diverse Voices Project (DVP) Selection.

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Documentary finesse can...be seen in Flag Wars...The film is fascinating point-of-view storytelling.

— Elvis Mitchell, New York Times

Flag Wars, the extraordinarily moving documentary by Linda Goode Bryant and Laura Poitras, tells the story of an increasingly common but little-documented American phenomenon—the economic and ideological clashes involved in urban gay gentrification...Featuring an immediate vérité style, unforgettable subjects, and a hauntingly elegiac jazz score by Graham Haynes, the film is as deeply moving as it is politically astute.

— The Advocate

The 'gentrification' of poor neighborhoods may sound like a good thing, if you're white and middle class. But what about the poorest of the poor who may own a ramshackle house and not have the money to make necessary repairs? This insightful documentary presents a black neighborhood invaded by white gays who seem at first unsympathetic to their black neighbors. But the seed of solution is here and it lies in unselfish volunteerism.

— M.S. Mason, Christian Science Monitor