Rudyland

The filmmakers’ intentions are very clear right from the opening titles: is written in unequivocal Disney letters. The opening of a Disney store in the area around Times Square, which had been impoverished due to drug dealing and prostitution, was a personal victory for New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.The Republican Giuliani is praised by supporters and opponents alike because of the decrease in crime in New York. After his first term, he was re-elected in a landslide victory. RUDYLAND focuses on the drawbacks of his policy in the Lower East Side, traditionally a meeting place for immigrants and freebooters, such as squatters and artists. Alongside crime, facilities for homeless people and cultural sanctuaries have likewise come under pressure. ‘Visual art does not express ideas,’ Giuliani states. So freedom of speech did not prevent him from discontinuing the subsidy to the Brooklyn Museum after an exhibition Giuliani found shocking. Giuliani also made headlines worldwide because of his unconditional support for the New York police, who shot an unarmed African immigrant 41 times in front of his house. ‘He’s certainly not Adolf Hitler’, Giuliani’s predecessor Edward Koch says, ‘but he is Joe McCarthy.’Giuliani’s influence reaches beyond New York. His zero tolerance policy is also being discussed in the Netherlands. Which makes RUDYLAND not only an impressionistic portrait of New York under Giuliani, made with the speed and multiplicity of styles characteristic of the city, but also a confrontational political documentary about the area of tension between freedom and safety in a multicultural metropolis.