Summer Screenings | Gowanus Current
Join us for a screening of the documentary film Gowanus Current followed by a talkback with the filmmakers Jamie Courville and Chris Reynolds.
A century and a half of industrial waste and raw sewage has turned Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal into one of the nation’s most toxic bodies of water. Squeezed between some of the borough’s most expensive brownstone neighborhoods, neglected public housing, row houses and small manufacturing have long dotted its sludgy banks. However, an ambitious EPA Superfund cleanup and a massive rezoning plan by the city hint that the real changes are just beginning.
Shot over the course of ten years, Gowanus Current explores the textures of this unique part of the city and the passions and hopes of stakeholders fighting for its future.
This program is part of CBH’s Summer Screenings, a series of documentary films about Brooklyn.
Participants
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 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 have made together.
Jamie Courville’s career has included doing continuity for Muppets, editing video art, working in post for documentaries, and founding a video collective. Her audio portraits have appeared on public radio stations, both broadcast across the US and on web-based platforms. Her work examines perceptions of disease, race, gender and class. Other recent projects include The Great Pandemics Archive collection of paper ephemera recently acquired by the New York Public Library, the short experimental documentary “Kuleshov in 2020”, and a series of media art installations contemplating the changing landscape of Gowanus.
Chris Reynolds has worked extensively in both independent and studio film production. Climbing his way up in the camera department from Loader to Cinematographer, he has worked for a long list of talented filmmakers, learning from eminent directors like Ang Lee, Alfonso Cuaròn and David O. Russell. His work can be seen in such acclaimed projects as Into the Wild, Silver Linings Playbook, and Orange Is the New Black. He was Producer and Cinematographer on Courville’s “Kuleshov in 2020” and with her co-created the Gowanus-themed media art installations “Drift,” "Reflection," "Torrent," and "Grotto."
