Next Wednesday 92YTribeca is holding a work-in-progress screening of a film called “My Brooklyn,” a documentary that looks at how Downtown Brooklyn has changed over the 10 or so years. The movie is first-person account of director Kelly Anderson’s observations as a Brooklyn “gentrifier”:

The story begins when Anderson moves to Brooklyn in 1988, lured by cheap rents and bohemian culture. By Michael Bloomberg’s election as mayor in 2001, a massive speculative real estate boom is rapidly altering the neighborhoods she has come to call home. She watches as an explosion of luxury housing and chain store development spurs bitter conflict over who has a right to live in the city and to determine its future. While some people view these development patterns as ultimately revitalizing the city, to others, they are erasing the eclectic urban fabric, economic and racial diversity, creative alternative culture, and unique local economies that drew them to Brooklyn in the first place. It seems that no less than the city’s soul is at stake.

As shown in the trailer above, one of the movie’s focal points has to do with efforts to change the Fulton Mall, and from this one of the “film’s ultimate questions become how to heal the deep racial wounds embedded in our urban development patterns, and how citizens can become active in restoring democracy to a broken planning process.”
“My Brooklyn” [Official Site]
“My Brooklyn” Screening [92YTribeca]


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