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Urbanized: Gary Hustwit's documentaries to play at the Lightbox

interchange42

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If you missed it during the film festival, Gary Hustwit's excellent documentary on making better cities - Urbanized - is playing at the Lightbox this weekend along with his earlier works, Helvetica, and Objectified.

Urbanized, which is a natural for any UrbanToronto reader, plays Friday evening at 6:30pm and Sunday evening at 8:30 pm. Helvetica and Objectified play early in the day on Saturday.

Check out http://tiff.net for all the info!
 
Thanks for posting this, i42! I looked into it and was quite intrigued so now me and two friends are heading down there. Excited because not only does it look like a great film, but I've not yet been to experience a show at the Lightbox yet.
 
It was great seeing it again on Friday. I take it you were there too SP!RE? Our little group enjoyed it - I want Enrique Peñalosa as mayor of everywhere. Hopefully more people will see it tonight!
 
A full house at tonight's late show, very heartening. The collective desire to make our mayor watch this reminder that cities are about imagination and interaction was palpable.
 
Was there Friday night with some other UT'ers. It was great and left me somewhat optimistic in these strange times.

For the record, all of Gary Hustwit's films are great, but this one was pretty damn out-of-the-park fantastic. Put it this way... if "urbanism" were a religion, this film would be your Bible!
 
For a film about exploding population densities in cities, it seemed curiosly blind to the idea that the wide open spaces between Oscar Niemeyer's Brasilia buildings will accommodate future development, as they surely must.
 
It will take a sea change in Brasilia to build to an "infill" plan. If that's not being seriously talked about yet, then it's not surprising it's not in the film.

42
 
The Stuttgart section, showing all those people rioting, seemed quite odd though video of riot police at work is always compelling. There had apparently been plenty of public consultation with the project, and we were shown a graphic where a maze of train tracks was to buried ( wish Toronto would take that approach with our railway berm ... ) and yet there they were getting all upset.
 
...which demonstrated the clashes of opinion that take place and how it's hard to decide which decisions are the right ones to make and for how many people. I thought it was very powerful and effective, and frustrating.
 

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