Not for Sale (NR)

synopsis

'Not for Sale' documents life on the Lower East Side of Manhattan -- from the bulldozing of Esperanza Community Garden, to the cracking floor in a basement apartment. The film tells the story of old-timers on the block, going about their daily lives amid gentrification. They tell their memories of what used to be an immigrant lower-class neighborhood. All around, new residential buildings go up, catering to young, white, professional singles, eating away the remaining space of this older and mostly Puerto Rican community. As the private and the political conflate and inform each other, the film addresses universal questions of home, land, and (in)security. Different portraits make up an interlocking and personal narrative so that a place, a time, a culture, voices and dreams reveal themselves in an intimate manner.
'Not for Sale' explores a microcosm where disparate men and women strive to maintain a sense of identity, roots and space as the larger social fabric is being dismantled to serve global economy.