Perestroika: Reconstruction of a Flat

It's said that good fences make for good neighbors, and one might presume that the opposite is true -- that too little distance between people who live in the same place will only make trouble down the line. Filmmaker Christiane Buchner presents an object lesson example of this principle in action in the documentary pereSTROIKA -- reCONTRUCTION of a Flat. When the Soviet Union was dissolved, Russians were given deeds to the apartments in which they lived, which had previously been the property of the state. However, some of these apartments were actually large single rooms in old homes, with the various tenants sharing bathrooms and kitchens. With the tenants of one of these buildings effectively sharing ownership of the place, each of the deed holders must agree on any changes being made in their arrangement. Buchner allows us to witness the clumsiness of this process in action as one of the residents of a St. Petersburg komunalka decides to sell her room to move into a self-contained apartment, and her neighbors are forced to negotiate the fine points of their contracts while local real estate agents see an opportunity to take control of an aging but still valuable piece of property.