DULCE HOGAR

Home Sweet Home

Agoraphobia Collective

Home sweet home poster image in Spanish, reading: Dulce Hogar
A wall showing a poster saying: it gentrifies, alluding to an on sale sign
The apartment building of Oswaldo's family
Front view of the apartment building of Oswaldo's family
portrait of Oswaldo
Inside shot of one of the apartments in Oswaldo's building. It shows the floor has been removed

The documentary "Home Sweet Home" narrates the circumstances of a family located in the historic center of Bogotá, Colombia, undergoing expropriation for an urban renewal project. The household of Oswaldo and Rosa, their grandson Esteban, and his grandmother Isabel, is located in the Administrative Center neighborhood, in the locality of La Candelaria. They managed to acquire their home more than 20 years ago through the work they did as informal sweet vendors, many years of saving, and a bank loan. The Ministries Project, a public-private partnership, is intervening in several blocks of that neighborhood to replace everything there, including the home in question, with government institutions and related services. The drama begins when the money that the corporation offers for the property does not recognize its commercial and cadastral value, forcing the family to refuse to sell it. This circumstance triggered a legal and psychological struggle of several years that reaches its highest tension at the end of 2016: when the demolition of the entire block where the house is located is carried out, and the building itself is dismantled with the family still living in it. The home of Oswaldo, Rosa, Esteban, and Isabel has decided to resist.

Credits:
Family: Oswaldo Gutiérrez Bautista, Ana Rosa Cardozo Durán, Esteban Javier Suárez González, and Isabel Durán.
Production: Agoraphobia Collective & Mónica Torregrosa Gallo.
Sound Postproduction: Pablo Rincón Díaz.
Voice: Miguel Rincón.

The documentary "Home Sweet Home" is supported by academic research on the process of gentrification happening in the La Candelaria neighborhood of Bogotá, from which the case of the González-Cardozo family was identified. The artistic collective Agoraphobia and Mónica Torregrosa, concerned about the situation and able to support its visibility through art, began a documentary project at the end of December 2016. The initiative aims to capture a perspective of the immediate context based on social aspects to be launched in the short term. The documentary will be accompanied by a signature collection campaign to petition the authorities to vindicate and guarantee the personal rights of the home in question.