Coming to theatres and to VOD tomorrow, Friday, April 21:
CITIZEN JANE: BATTLE FOR THE CITY
Director:
Matt Tyrnauer
Premiere:
Toronto 2016
Select Festivals:
DOC NYC, Miami, CPH:DOX, Sarasota, Hong Kong
About:
In the 1960s, writer and activist Jane Jacobs faces off against NYC’s ruthless urban planner, Robert Moses.
With her acclaimed 1961 book, THE DEATH AND LIFE OF GREAT AMERICAN CITIES, Jane Jacobs challenged conventional wisdom about urban planning by foregrounding the diversity and complexity of the use of city spaces by the actual individuals and communities that resided within them. She took particular exception to the concept of urban renewal, seeing it as a destructive force which unnaturally segregated spaces, ignoring the organic manner in which these urban ecosystems had developed over generations. When Jacobs’ beloved NYC was threatened by Robert Moses with a widespread redevelopment plan which would see whole neighborhoods destroyed in order to install a highway through lower Manhattan, the activist showed the power of communities to rally together to save their homes, as detailed in Tyrnauer’s vibrant and topical chronicle, which doubles as a love letter to the city.
