Blindspotting: The Architecture of Erasure
It is one thing to write a screenplay about a changing city. It is another thing entirely to attempt to film it and realize the city has already vanished. This was the brutal reality that faced writers and stars Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal during the pre-production of Blindspotting. The script was rooted in highly specific Oakland locations, crafted over years. But by the time director Carlos López Estrada and his crew arrived to shoot, many of those locations had already been erased by rapid, aggressive gentrification. The production was forced to adapt to the very displacement they were trying to document. ...