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Urban Renewal (13)
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645 WellingtonKaveh Nabatian 2002 54 minA stone's throw from downtown Montreal, quirky artists, blue-collar workers and unconventional families are being forced to leave their old neighbourhood as high-tech firms move in. Like in so many other cities, the tech companies arrive with the promise of a rosy future--but it's one built on demolitions, evictions and the conversion of low-rent property to high-priced condos.
This is a portrait of one building and its residents--people like Constanzo 'Fartman' Manna, an eccentric shipper and packer who's headed for Chile to marry the love of his life and bring her back to Montreal; artist Luc Bourbonnais, who is fighting desperately to hold on to the loft that inspires so much of his art; and Cuban émigré Rolando Zambrano, who ran a neighbourhood snack bar for nearly 30 years.
Shot over a period of six months and set to a pulsing Latin and rock soundtrack, 645 Wellington not only opens a window onto the lives of the building's residents but brings the building itself to life. We come to know the dark hallways, the corners and the doorways. We get to know them well. Just as they are about to change, forever.
645 Wellington was produced as part of the Reel Diversity Competition for emerging filmmakers of colour. Reel Diversity is a National Film Board of Canada initiative in partnership with CBC Newsworld. -
City Center and PedestriansMichel Régnier 1974 56 minThis film focusses on the approaches that several cities have taken to one problem. Through various examples, it examines the implications and options for a pedestrian-oriented city core.
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Düsseldorf - Balanced Urban GrowthMichel Régnier 1974 56 minIndividualized for profit, yet harmonious in its whole, Düsseldorf has met and largely conquered the conflicting demands of economic growth and human environment.
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Farewell Oak StreetGrant McLean 1953 17 minThis documentary presents a before-and-after picture of people in a large-scale public housing project in Toronto. Due to a housing shortage, they were forced to live in squalid, dingy flats and ramshackle dwellings on a crowded street in Regent Park North; now they have access to new, modern housing developments designed to offer them privacy, light and space.
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Les Habitations Jeanne-ManceEugene Boyko 1963 13 minOverpopulation, slum housing, widespread illness and criminal behaviour were the norm. Now Montréal, collaborating with the federal and provincial governments in its first slum redevelopment project, has replaced this with clean, low-density housing--Les Habitations Jeanne-Mance.
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The Innocent DoorKenneth McCready 1973 29 minThis short documentary affords us an unusual and privileged view of the old city of Jerusalem, before and after the redevelopment of certain key sectors took place in the early 1970s. The man appointed to try to reconcile the need for change with traditional values is Montreal architect Moshe Safdie. His plans, shown in scale models, are in harmony with ancient architecture and encompass the “innocent doorways” that lead from walled streets to pleasant courtyards.
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Little BurgundyBonnie Sherr Klein & Maurice Bulbulian 1969 30 minWhen an old area of a city is to be demolished to make way for a new low-rental housing development, is there anything that the residents can do to protect their own interests? This film, produced in 1968, airs such a situation in the Little Burgundy district of Montréal. It shows how citizens organized themselves into a committee that made effective representations to City Hall and influenced the housing policy.
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Manufactured LandscapesJennifer Baichwal 2006 1 h 26 minFor almost three decades, internationally renowned Canadian artist Edward Burtynsky has been creating large scale photographs of landscapes transformed by industry: quarries, scrap heaps, factories, recycling yards, dams. Manufactured Landscapes follows Burtynsky to China as he travels the country capturing the evidence and effects of China's massive industrial revolution. Rarely witnessed sites such as the Three Gorges Dam (50% larger than any other dam in the world), the interior of a factory which produces 20 million irons a year, and the breathtaking scale of Shanghai's urban renewal are subjects for his lens and our motion picture camera. Shot in sumptuous super 16mm film, Manufactured Landscapes extends the narratives of Burtynsky's photographs, meditating on human impact on the planet without trying to reach simplistic judgements or reductive resolutions. In the process, the film shifts our consciousness about the world and the way we live in it.
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Montréal - The Neighborhood RevivedMichel Régnier 1974 56 minThis full-length documentary from the Challenge for Change program addresses housing issues affecting Montreal in the mid-1970s. As the city is restoring older apartments through direct action and government subsidies, new, low-rent housing is being integrated into old neighborhoods.
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New York - Twin Parks Project - TV Channel 13Michel Régnier 1974 56 minThis feature-length documentary examines the reality of New York City in the 1970s, a place that had become a symbol of urban disaster. The 2 projects profiled attempt to tackle the problem of America’s biggest city: in a dilapidated part of the Bronx, a co-operative citizens’ movement tries to rejuvenate urban life; and WNET-TV uses its programming as an open forum for the public debate on urban issues.
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Redevelopment in Windsor - The First Step1964 13 minThis film shows how the city of Windsor, Ontario, solved the need for the redevelopment of old sections of the city by employing the available resources of the provincial and federal governments. A first low-rental housing project, Glengarry Court, was undertaken and completed, and plans were extended to include the redevelopment of a choice riverfront area.
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Red Star AlleyJenny Yujia Shi 2024 2 minA vine takes root in old Beijing, witnessing the passage of time in a traditional hutong—part of an urban fabric that’s fast disappearing as the city undergoes radical transformation. Making ingenious use of backlit cut-outs, Jenny Yujia Shi crafts an animated elegy to a vanishing way of life.
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There’s No Place Like This Place, AnyplaceLulu Wei 2020 1 h 16 minThere’s No Place Like This Place, Anyplace chronicles the transformation of a much-loved Toronto landmark, the Honest Ed’s block, through the stories of its community members who are forced to relocate when it is sold to a developer.
