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Citizen Jane: Battle for the City
Writer and urban activist Jane Jacobs fights to save historic New York City during the ruthless redevelopment era of urban planner Robert Moses in the 1960s.
4 May 1916, Scranton, Pennsylvania, USA
30 June 1959, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA
4 December 1964, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA
June 30, 2017
A bracing, insightful study of how cities are made and sometimes destroyed.June 22, 2017
A plucky intellectual takes on New York's most powerful builder in Citizen Jane: Battle for the City, an engrossing documentary that details a historical conflict that is being repeated around the world today.May 25, 2017
Most good documentaries are powered by conflict, and you couldn't ask for a struggle more elemental or relevant to our time than the one chronicled in Citizen Jane: Battle for the City.May 11, 2017
[It] feels like a visualized term paper.May 04, 2017
The movie is scored like a thriller, seemingly building to some terrifying conclusion. And, in a way, it does ...June 01, 2017
She was also one tough cookie who appreciated a good fight. A bit more internal tussle would have both better honored her spirit and made for a better documentary.May 03, 2017
In the context of today's stymied political trench wars, there is inspiration to be found in Jacobs' example of local activism, original thinking, and rational argument blossoming into useful change.May 11, 2017
This straightforward and bracingly optimistic documentary explains the ways that shaping politics and wielding power can ease urban decline or inflate it.June 29, 2017
Like his previous film, Valentino: The Last Emperor, about the famous fashion designer, director Matt Tyrnauer takes on a fascinating subject yet mostly consolidates existing information without adding much to our knowledge base.May 11, 2017
It's his depiction of the adversarial relationship between those making decisions and those affected by them that hits home.June 02, 2017
Tyrnauer uses a ton of archival footage to tell his story, and brings it in at a brisk 92 minutes.June 14, 2017
A timely warning against big-block buildings with empty ground-floor shop units, nonetheless.