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November 22, 2011
Battle for Brooklyn Makes Oscar Short List, Thanks to Occupy Movement
Huffington Post
by Bruce E. Levine
The 2011 Oscar documentaries short list is in, and the good news is that Battle for Brooklyn -- snubbed earlier this year by many major film festivals -- is on that list. The Occupy movement has made Battle for Brooklyn impossible to ignore.
Battle for Brooklyn asks: Do we really accept that Big Money -- through intimidation, bribery, or some other coercion -- can shove us out of our homes and obliterate our communities? The film is about the abuse of eminent domain by the rich and powerful. Eminent domain is the government's right to seize private property (usually with compensation) for the public good. However, it is the elite -- not ordinary Americans -- who have the power to define what is the public good. Battle for Brooklyn documents a group of the "99 percent" who, between 2004 and 2011, staged a courageous battle against the "1 percent" at a time when most of us had lost our fight.
Related coverage...
Meadowlands Matters [NorthJersey.com], Brooklyn 1, Jersey 0
While I got about 5 to 10 minutes of airtime in Soprano State with my colleague Jeff Pillets explaining the Xanadu and EnCap sagas in the Meadowlands, I actually more thoroughly “lived” the Goldstein story. Goldstein, filmmakers Michael Galinsky and Suki Hawley, and I could not have imagined that a show of resistance by Goldstein around 2004 that was reported by me and filmed by Galinsky and Hawley would turn into a long-running saga that lasted for all of us (and felt most viscerally by Goldstein, obviously) until 2010.
...What makes Battle for Brooklyn so compelling is that the producers have hundreds of hours of “live footage” to work with. I saw Goldstein change over the years from a neophyte in terms of dealing with the press (occasionally, that being just me, in this post-apocalyptic media age) to a savvy promoter of his cause. And if you see this film, you’ll see the same transformation thanks to the years of stockpiled footage.
Reason Hit & Run, Battle for Brooklyn Shortlisted for an Oscar
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced that Battle for Brooklyn, the acclaimed documentary about New York’s eminent domain abuse on behalf of real estate tycoon and New Jersey Nets co-owner Bruce Ratner, is one of 15 films shortlisted in the Documentary Feature category in the upcoming Academy Awards, with the five final nominees to be selected from this group. It’s a well-deserved honor.
Posted by eric at November 22, 2011 12:55 PM