The Kim Liên area of collective housings (Khu Tap The, KTT in Vietnamese) is located at the Southern border of the Dong Da district, in the close outskirts of the centre of Hanoi.
It spreads over 42 ha and was planned to host 7000 inhabitants (workers, state employees, scientists).
In 2000, the population exceeded 21000 people. Designed according to town planning models and rationalist architecture, the area of Kim Liên originated ex nihilo in the middle of the Vietnam War between 1960 and 1970. At that time, the housing policy was one of the North-Vietnamese State's priorities and Kim Liên and the other KTT areas represented the “red belt" of Hanoi. This housing socialization policy contributed to the ideological and political will of the North-Vietnamese system to transform and control individuals and the society.
In 1986, the socialist State of reunified Vietnam adopts market reforms fostering private initiative: the Doi Moi (“change to renew").
It institutes the policy of “cooperation between the State and the people" and pulls out from the maintenance of the KTT. The KTT inhabitants can henceforth become the owners of the right of user of their apartment. Individual process of housing self-promotion appears afterwards. The area's aspect changes; the blocks of flats disappear behind the extension of the former apartments, and new lodgings are built through the chinks of public space. However, these very concrete changes are no more than the most directly identifiable expression of the inhabitants' creation of their living space, the most visible realization of lines of flight escaping control and creating a diversified ordinary.
The movie follows some of these individual trajectories: those of the inhabitants of the area (the badminton players, the water bindweed gatherer, the bikes repairman, the hairdressers, the bricklayers …) or those of the passers-by (all the pedlars, carriers, shoe-shiner, ragmen...) who participate to the transformation of predetermined places into living spaces with their unceasing moves.
Divided between two mechanisms of control, the one political (perseverance of the communist system), the other economical (appearance of the homogenizing laws of merchandizing), the inhabitants and casual passers-by of Kim Liên make room for acts of resistance and moments of freedom in order to improve their situation and to materialize their will to “come through alright“.
In July 2003, we came back to Kim Liên. With no great build-up the authorities forecasted to pull down the former blocks of flats in order to construct a new type of building for a new type of population. The shaded square with its hairdressers and badminton players had already been razed to the ground. The inhabitants of flat B still did not know how it would turn out for them.
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