Apartment Look

Janicza Bravo’s film “Lemon” begins with a black woman’s face on a television screen. “They come in the night, always at night. You don’t hear them coming,” the woman says. “They took my family. They burned my village. They didn’t take me. I don’t know why.”  The camera then pans slowly through a Los Angeles apartment and lands upon a sleeping man named Isaac , played by Brett Gelman, whose crotch is soaked with urine. He wakes up, rubs the pee-stained spot with his hands and sniffs them before jumping up from the couch and frantically attempting to remove his pants without waking his girlfriend. This introduction aptly summarizes who Isaac is. He’s lame, pathetic, grotesque; a failure by most standards. And yet, as a white guy, he’s removed from any real possibility of danger or harm. The worst fate that could befall him is the banal shame of wetting himself.  “There is this genre of white guy comedy where a 30-something guy is floundering,” Bravo told HuffPost . “But he has a soli...

One resident narrowly escaped a mass murderer, another prefers parrots over people for company and a third is a a retired conman who just wants to be left alone to enjoy some of the best inner-city views in Sydney. Welcome to Northcott towers, Sydney's most notorious housing commission complex tucked away in what has become one of Australia's trendiest and most exclusive suburbs. About 1,200 residents pay as little as $80 a week for one- or two-bedroom units in the 14-story buildings in Surry Hills, just a stone's throw from the CBD where average rents for a two- bedroom home run to more than $900 a week. Known as the 'suicide towers,' the complex is Australia’s largest single block of public housing units and has a notorious reputation involving with drug abuse, mental health and unemployment. Invited by members of the tight-knit community of residents, Daily Mail Australia spent a day in the towers to 'meet the family' and explore the colourful neig...