Hawley and Galinsky spent nearly a decade on their acclaimed documentary about the Atlantic Yards development
In the cold of December 2003, Michael Galinsky fetched his camera and raced out of his Brooklyn home. He had just returned from the grocery store, and there, on a bulletin board, a flier announced community opposition to a proposal to build the largest development in borough history.
What Galinsky started filming that day became “Battle for Brooklyn,” a documentary about the community fight, still raging, against the Atlantic Yards development. The film specifically focuses on the fight of one resident, Daniel Goldstein, to keep from losing his home through eminent domain.
“Every time we make a film, the subject matter could be describing us,” said Suki Hawley, 42, who is both Galinsky’s co-director and wife.
“It’s about what’s right,” Galinsky, 42, said of making the film. “It’s that this is wrong, and I don’t agree with it.”
Galinsky filmed for six and half years, a Canon XL1 mounted on his shoulder. Then Hawley edited for a year, with her younger daughter often on her lap. All along, David Beilinson produced, doing everything from conceptualizing, graphics, posters, tracking down old footage to making arrangements to add the helicopter shots that became the opening sequence of the film. The three are partners of Rumur, Inc., a multimedia company based in Brooklyn.
Hawley and Galinsky met while Hawley was in film school at New York University, where Galinsky had majored in religious studies. Their meeting would combine high-school loves, Hawley’s of editing videos and Galinsky’s of taking photographs. They made their first feature film, “Half-Cocked,” in 1994, about kids who pretend to be a band after stealing a van full of music equipment. “Radiation” (about a Spanish rock promoter), “Horns and Halos” (about three men with an unlikely connection), and “Miami Manhunt” (about the Miami serial rapist Reynaldo Rapalo) followed.
“Battle for Brooklyn” premiered on April 30 and is now playing at the Brooklyn Heights Cinema. The film’s opening scene fills with an aerial view of a large construction site in Brooklyn as urgent music thumps and rouses the theater. It feels like something out of the thriller “Mission Impossible,” and the story that unfolds echoes those words.
In the film, Bruce Ratner of Forest City Ratner Companies and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announce the Atlantic Yards Project in December 2003. The proposal covers a 22-acre site that includes a busy intersection where Park Slope, Fort Greene, and Prospect Heights neighborhoods meet. The site would be the future home of the New Jersey Nets, a basketball team owned by Ratner. The project promised high-rise apartment buildings, office towers, shops, green spaces, and 15,000 jobs.
The project footprint fell on existing condominiums, apartments, and small businesses.
As the development began, seizure by eminent domain was based on labeling the area “blighted.” But “blighted” meant an area was substandard and unsanitary — a slum — a characterization the area residents objected to as far from accurate. Beyond that, the film contends, eminent domain had to be for “clear obvious public purpose,” not private development, and no local elected officials had ever voted on the proposal or had a say otherwise.
One scene of the film shows the developer’s lawyer arguing before the New York State Supreme Court that the area was indeed blighted, making eminent domain proper. In response, Judge Bob Smith asks, “Have you gerrymandered the area to fit the project?”
“Battle for Brooklyn” won the Grand Chameleon Award for best picture at the recent Brooklyn Film Festival. It was also at Hot Docs in Toronto, Cinema Village in Manhattan, indieScreen in Brooklyn, and is scheduled for showings in Los Angeles, Seattle, Santa Fe, and other cities.
Reviews have called the film a “must-see,” “a 21st century addendum to the troubling modern history of eminent domain use,” and praised its “heart, soul and chutzpah” and the filmmakers’ years of dedication to telling the story fairly and deftly. The film has received acclaim from the Wall Street Journal, New York Daily News, New York Times, Rooftop Films, Filmmaker Magazine, and NPR, among others.
At a Cinema Village Q&A, Hawley stood in front of the movie screen, while Galinsky sat on a stool and Beilinson stood against the wall. Fiona, Hawley and Galinsky’s nine-year-old daughter, sat poised between her father and Beilinson. Harper, five years old, climbed onto her mother and father in turn while they interacted with the audience.
Hawley explained that they had focused on the emotional story of Goldstein fighting for his home and edited to convey information without overwhelming the audience with how complex the situation was. They held 30 screenings at Rumur, Inc.’s offices, noting when people fiddled with phones or stayed glued to the screen. They wanted the film to be a conduit for the audience to experience what the residents had gone through.
A woman in the audience said she was both angry and inspired, then asked, “Do you now have enough for national distribution?” The audience laughed.
Outside the theater, Ann Andrew, an ophthalmologist who lives near the footprint of the Atlantic Yards, said of the film and the filmmakers, “This was an incredible labor of love, what they’ve done with this film. It’s such a huge story on so many levels. I think they represent what Brooklyn is and the best it can be.”
According to Steven David of Cinema Village, “Battle for Brooklyn” was doing well.
“We’re never this close to selling out theater one,” which has a capacity of 180 people, he said.
The filmmakers had struggled to fund the film, living frugally, doing much of the work themselves. They funneled money from doing commercial jobs and raised $125,000 from third parties. The total budget, Beilinson said, ran between $750,000 and $1 million, including salaries and in-kind services from composers and production assistants.
Near the end of “Battle for Brooklyn,” Goldstein looks over his empty apartment, then goes out the door one last time. That was May 7, 2010.
New York City Council Member Letitia James, who fought alongside the community, summarizes the situation in one scene: “This is not development. This is not democracy. This is destruction.”
As the film closes, over a year has passed since the official groundbreaking at Atlantic Yards. Only the arena is under construction, and 114 jobs have materialized, just 14 of those going to local residents.
Recent dispatches on www.dddb.net, by the non-profit organization Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, cite 543 jobs at the site, 217 of them held by Brooklyn residents.
As underdogs going up against government and industry, fighting “the revolving door between government and industry,” Galinsky knows that they always fight a losing battle, “100 percent,” he said, a mission impossible. But the alternative seems worse to him.
“Do what you know is right,” he said, “and if you don’t, you lose a little bit of your soul.”
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