Flag wars

That a film about real estate could be this fascinating and blood-boiling is just one of the many wonders in the absorbing documentary Flag Wars.

In Columbus, Ohio, old ills of racism, class-ism and sexual discrimination are recast as a fresh battleground under the new, covert guise of historic preservation, zoning and property tax issues. The predominately aging, African-American Olde Towne section of Columbus is being gentrified by white gay men and women who are restoring elegant old houses, often with little regard for the pre-existing community they are moving into.

Filmmakers Linda Goode Bryant and Laura Poitras have hit upon a powder keg subject that will be close to many Atlantans' hearts. The film could just have easily been set in Kirkwood or Decatur. Flag Wars is a stodgy title for a film full of invective, outrage and genuine cruelty that provokes questions about how much damage gentrification and designations like "historic district" can do in displacing the original occupants of a neighborhood.

The filmmakers found their perfect camera-ready boogeyman in the film's frequently soused, loud-mouthed real estate agent, a crowing, self-congratulatory power broker who greedily sizes up a neighborhood of old houses as yummy pickings. "I'm not selling," she nastily mocks the largely elderly and poor black people who still occupy their "diamonds in the rough." "But he too shall pass, and that's how we'll sell it," she tells a colleague.

That this viper turns out to be the most accurate judge of how market forces triumph in the end is one of the most demoralizing truths in Flag Wars. Human beings are just disposable, inconvenient obstacles in the realtor's scheme to plant a new world order in Olde Towne. The outcome of one local homeowner's bitterly fought effort to hold onto her house despite illness and a lack of financial resources is one of the most tragic illustrations of that nasty truth. Viewers will cringe at the conclusion of a film that shows the callous cruelty of human relationships reduced to money and how easily people are made into enemies.

Flag Wars screens Fri., June 13, 2:30 p.m. and Sat., June 14, at 1:30 p.m. at the Rialto Center for the Performing Arts.