HOUSES OF POVERTY

Directed by Henri Storck

1936 / 29min

Henri Storck’s militant short on Depression-era Belgium, set in Walloon slums on the outskirts of a prosperous city. Staged vignettes expose substandard housing, overcrowding, and numbed survival through claustrophobic, frame-filling images; a coda on slum clearance and “garden city” rehousing offers guarded hope.