Everybody is from Anywhere. Hillbrow, Johannesburg

by Doerte Ulka Engelkes

Production: MPI MMG 2014
Camera: Doerte Ulka Engelkes
Sound: Anna Seegers-Krueckeberg
Editing: Abbas Yousefpour
Location: South Africa
Language: English

By 2050, an estimated 70 per cent of the world’s population will live in cities. Through internal and international migration urban population will increasingly become more diverse ethnically, religiously, linguistically and in terms of legal status.
We know little about these experiences of migration-driven diversification, urban space and everyday contacts.
How do these processes influence social rela- tions? Do they shape new patterns of coexis- tence or cause new conflicts?

The films of the GlobaldiverCities Trilogy transform these research questions into visual narrations. The documentaries portray people and places in three neighborhoods in Singapore, New York und Johannesburg.

This film features a neighborhood of Johannesburg in South Africa. Hillbrow’s population changed after the Apartheid era from an almost exclusively white suburb to a dominantly black area. White South Africans and migrants from rural South Africa meet people from all over Africa who recently arrived to look for a better life. The documentary portrays different protagonists, their way of living and how they get along with friends and strangers in the streets and places of Hillbrow.