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October 19, 2009
NAS INTERVIEW: “BATTLE FOR BROOKLYN” FILMMAKER
NetsAreScorching
by Mark Ginocchio
Here's one that snuck past us last week — NAS's interview with documentary filmmaker Michael Galinsky.
Galinksky, who resides in the Clinton Hill section of Brooklyn, has been working on the film for nearly six years now, amassing more than 300 hours of footage. One of the focal points of his film is Daniel Goldstein of Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, whose Pacific Street apartment sits where the Nets’ Barclays Arena would be built.
...NAS: Describe a few things that have surprised you in the making of this film. Some things you learned about the project, or the people involved that you didn’t expect.
Michael Galinksy: Honestly, working on this project has had an enormous impact on me and my view of the world. I would have to say that I considered myself pretty liberal when I started shooting, but my faith in government has been severely shaken by the process of working on this film.
I started this project because I read the initial article in the New York Times and I was struck by the fact that it sounded like a press release. As such, I was curious about what was really going on. I don’t live right by the footprint, but my daughter was going to daycare two blocks away so I was very familiar with the area.
A few years before the project was announced, my wife and I bought a beat up house and spent the next few years learning how to fix it up. When you go from being a renter to a home-owner you take a little bit more interest in your community because you become invested in it. After about 3 years we had a baby. With a baby you really start to meet the people around you- and you rely on them for information about day care, etc - You really start to build roots. Still, I didn’t even know what a community board was until I started to shoot.
As I followed the story, I saw how the government and the community interacted and it wasn’t pretty. On a basic local level, there was some responsiveness to what the community wanted; but when the politicians who made the decisions had less connection with the community, they could take the community for granted more easily.
With a project of this size, the impacts on the surrounding communities promises to be profound, yet nobody who was affected by the project was given any real opportunity to have their opinions taken into consideration.
Related coverage...
Rumur.com, blah blah blog
Earlier this week I answered some questions about our Atlantic Yards film, “The Battle of Brooklyn” for a NJ Nets fan blog, netsarescorching.com. Nets fans are interested in the Atlantic Yards story because if the project moves forward the Nets will move to Brooklyn. As the blog is focused on basketball one of the first questions was about whether or not we had interviewed anyone in the Nets front office. In this case, the point of view of the audience is basketball focused. However, our film has almost nothing to do with basketball beyond the fact that the real estate debacle we are following involves an arena. I took great pains to clarify the films point of view and our style of filmaking. What I was attempting to do was “manage audience expectations”. Our films tend to be a little different from what average people expect in a documentary. Either they expect a Michael Moore style hell ride, or standard PBS fodder. In our films we often raise questions that aren’t answered in an overly direct way. One problem that we consistently run into is that when an audience expects X and you give them Y they think that the film has failed in its goals. As such, we try to manage the expectation of the audience so that they go in knowing what to expect. In this case I explained that we aren’t activists and aren’t journalists in the traditional sense.
Posted by eric at October 19, 2009 5:16 PM