FILMS
Community Energy (2026)
We can no longer think of energy as a commodity. Instead, we must see it as part of the global commons, a vital element in the great stock of air, water, plants and cultural forms like language and art that are the inheritance of humanity as a whole. Community energy explores the efforts of New York City-based environmental justice organizations to harness distributed modern renewable energy. These local movement plan to bring power to the people, and in the process to create many good green jobs building the infrastructure for sustainable futures.
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Public Power (2026)
Society must transition away from fossil fuels as fast as possible in order to avoid climate collapse. How can we build out utility scale renewable energy at the speed necessary? The free market is not getting us there. We need public power. This film documents the campaign of Public Power NY to build a just transition to renewable energy. Public Power is not simply fighting to shut down fossil capitalism – it’s also about generating thousands of good green jobs, lowering utility bills, and shutting down toxic fossil fuel infrastructure.
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Art Build for Environmental Justice (2026)
This short documentary includes a timelapse record of the art build that took place at the Center for Architecture in mid-April in preparation for the Energies of Repair exhibition. A group of nearly twenty young people who volunteer at the South Bronx-based environmental justice organization The POINT collaborated in painting four large works of art for the exhibition. This film includes interviews with five of the participants, who reflect on why they have chosen to be involved with The POINT, what environmental justice means to them, and what their hopes are for a just energy transition.
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Sunset Park tour (2026)
Sunset Park has been at the center of NYC’s maritime & industrial activity for centuries. The fight to shut down the toxic fossil fuel infrastructure that dominates the neighborhood’s 2.5-mile-long waterfront and to refashion that space as a hub for renewable energy construction and job creation is among the most consequential current struggles for the future of New York and other coastal cities. This film of a walking tour led by Sunset Park-based environmental justice organization UPROSE underlines how the neighborhood is particularly disproportionately burdened with fossil fuel infrastructure. The tour also explores how Sunset Park is a key site for experimental planning of a just energy transition, as embodied in its Green Resilient Industrial District (GRID) plan. Developed by UPROSE, the plan for a Green Resilient Industrial District (GRID) is a community-led vision for the future of the neighborhood’s industrial waterfront. Instead of the environmental gentrification that characterized the private rezoning proposal of Industry City in 2020, GRID is focused on green reindustrialization that would simultaneously benefit working class residents of the community and slash carbon emissions.
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Renewable Rikers (2026)
Rikers Island embodies the most repugnant injustices of the US system of mass incarceration. Built out of NYC’s toxic waste by forced prison labor, Rikers has become notorious as one of the country’s worst prisons. The vast majority of those held at Rikers are pre-trial detainees. These people have been convicted of nothing and are behind bars only because they are too poor to afford bail. The Renewable Rikers Act was designed to reverse these intertwined histories of unjust criminalization and environmental injustice. As a form of intersectional abolition, it explicitly links closure of the Rikers prison with the removal of noxious fossil fuel infrastructure in communities of color. Grounded in recognition of the common roots of anti-Black policing and environmental injustice, Renewable Rikers will be an important example of restorative environmental justice. This film documents a walking tour that interweaves histories of environmental injustice in the South Bronx with highlights of the campaign to win a Renewable Rikers.
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Peaker (2024)
This short film, made in 2024, documents the environmental and social impact of New York City’s “peaker plants.” These dirty fossil fuel facilities that only fire up during moments of peak electricity demand (like on hot summer afternoons). Since they only run for short periods, peaker plants are grandfathered out of the city’s environmental regulations. They burn the dirtiest fuels, spewing noxious waste into surrounding communities. They are overwhelmingly located in NYC’s working class communities of color, like the South Bronx. This film is shot in Queensboro Park, right next to the Ravenwood power plant and Queensbridge Houses, the largest public housing project in the United States.
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