“Fall into winter 1964, Urban Renewal forced us to move a few blocks to West of Broadway. Our Sky Socialist ‘set’ is still standing and I’m drawn back to document more. It’s old New York, a lot of history. And then it no longer stands, no more than my first home in the slums of Williamsburg just across the river.” — Ken Jacobs
What was almost lost — the heartbreaking handheld 8-mm footage that Jacobs shot as his first Manhattan neighborhood was being destroyed between 1963 and ’64 — has been rediscovered in intense color and stupendous movement thanks to this 2019 celluloid-digital hybrid. Somewhere in the middle of the film, I began to feel as I have when I looked at certain paintings by Cezanne and Vermeer for the first time — that the work of art has transformed the act of seeing ... A masterpiece, not only of avant-garde movies, or cityscape movies, or documentary essays, but a movie masterpiece, no modifiers needed. (Amy Taubin)
