“A thoughtful inquiry into the complex issues of neighborhood gentrification …” - Urban Omnibus

Winner, Audience Award for Documentary, 2012 Brooklyn Film Festival

MY BROOKLYN directed by Kelly Anderson and produced by Allison Lirish Dean
84 mins. | USA | 2012 | digital projection

My Brooklyn follows director Kelly Anderson’s journey, as a Brooklyn gentrifier, to understand the forces reshaping her neighborhood. The film documents the redevelopment of Fulton Mall, a bustling African-American and Caribbean commercial district that – despite its status as the third most profitable shopping area in New York City – is maligned for its inability to appeal to the affluent residents who have come to live around it. As a hundred small businesses are replaced by high rise luxury housing and chain retail, Anderson uncovers the web of global corporations, politicians and secretive public-private partnerships that drive seemingly natural neighborhood change. The film’s ultimate question is increasingly relevant on a global scale: who has a right to live in cities and determine their future?

KELLY ANDERSON
Kelly Anderson is documentary filmmaker and an Associate Professor of Media Studies at Hunter College (CUNY) in New York City. Kelly worked with Allison Lirish Dean on her most recent film My Brooklyn, a documentary demonstrating the ways city government and corporations colluded to reshape Downtown Brooklyn. It premiered at the 2012 Brooklyn Film Festival, where it shared the Audience Award with Su Friedrich’s film Gut Renovation. She also made the short film Never Enough, which discusses clutter, collecting, and Americans’ relationships with their stuff. It won an Artistic Excellence Award at the 2010 Big Sky Documentary Festival. In 2004, Kelly with the help of Tami Gold, produced and directed Every Mother’s Son, which won the Audience Award at the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival, aired on the PBS ”Point of View” series, and earned Kelly a nomination for a national Emmy in Direction. Kelly also worked with Tami, on Out at Work in 1997. It screened at the Sundance Film Festival, was broadcast on HBO, and won a GLAAD Award for Best Documentary.

EMILY GALLAGHER
Emily Gallagher serves as the current Co-Chair of Neighbors Allied for Good Growth (NAG), a community non-profit in North Brooklyn.  NAG works to build bridges between long-time and new residents in the neighborhoods of Greenpoint and Williamsburg, and empower them to fight for environmental, social and economic justice in their neighborhood.  Most recently, NAG have been advocating for a better, socially just response from the City government towards the unfulfilled community promises of the 2005 rezoning. Gallagher moved to Greenpoint in 2006.  A young Ithaca College graduate and neighborhood gentrify-er, Gallagher became increasingly concerned with the questionable smells, speeding garbage trucks and mysterious puddles she saw on her daily walks through the neighborhood.  As she began to research, she discovered that government neglect and hazardous environmental pollution was the source of longtime struggle in Greenpoint, despite it’s increasing rents and profile as an up-and-coming neighborhood.   Neighbors Allied for Good Growth, or NAG, had been involved in promoting a community voice in the neighborhood since 1994.  Upon attending her first meeting in 2007, Gallagher felt empowered to work alongside her neighbors for positive, community based change.  She has served as a devoted NAG volunteer since 2007 and as co-chair since 2010.  Gallagher earns her living as a Museum Educator.

LINCOLN RESTLER
Lincoln Restler is an activist, who ran a grassroots campaign for State Committeeman / as District Leader to clean up the borough’s Democratic party in 2010. Born and raised in Brooklyn, Lincoln is a strong neighborhood advocate, who has delivered real results for Greenpoint, Williamsburg, Fort Greene, and Clinton Hill – ranging from attracting new farmer’s markets and community gardens to leading the successful effort to keep the G train route intact.  Professionally, Lincoln is the Director of the New York City Employment and Training Coalition, a citywide coalition of 200 workforce development organizations.

PRESENTED WITH:

The Standby Program Inc., fosters the creation and preservation of media art work by democratizing access to media technology, providing technical consultation, and resources which advance the development of the media arts field. Standby is an innovative program that allows the arts community access to the resources of the private sector at reduced rates. The program operates out of several top-rated media post-production studios located in New York City.