Gowanus Current

Decades of industrial waste and raw sewage have turned Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal into one of the nation’s most toxic bodies of water.

The arrival of a billion dollar EPA cleanup and a massive city-led rezoning herald a new era, but what’s of value in a neighborhood and who gets to decide?

Made over the course of ten years, Gowanus Current employs a strictly observational direct-cinema approach to examine the convictions of this diverse community and the textures of its landscape. A documentary portrait of activism and its limits, this is urgent civic cinema exploring the conflict engendered by a housing crisis, income inequality and a changing climate.

“Gowanus Current is more than simply an artful account of community and grassroots activism, though it fulfills that promise superbly. The film is also a pure cinematic and sensory immersion in glinting water, straining machines, and passionate, eloquent humans as they struggle to make sense of this poisoned garden we’ve made of the world.”

– Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of Solitude

Hosted by WFMU DJ Brian D

Q&A following the screening with (Director, Producer, Editor) Jamie Courville and (Director, Producer, Cinematographer) Chris Reynolds

Jamie Courville (Director, Producer, Editor) and Chris Reynolds (Director, Producer, Cinematographer) are a Brooklyn-based wife and husband team that has collaborated creatively since meeting on a film set in Dallas in 2000. They each have over twenty-five years of filmmaking experience, learning the craft from the ground up working as crew members on projects large and small. This is the first feature documentary they are making together.

Website: GowanusCurrent.com

All proceeds support WFMU
WFMU Radio’s Monty Hall, located at 43 Montgomery Street in downtown Jersey City (mere steps from the Exchange Place PATH station)