Paul Goldberger

After the 9/11 attacks, after the smoke was gone, after the rubble cleared away, New Yorkers had a city to rebuild. In response to fast-tracked redevelopment plans, more than 5,000 people gathered in the largest town hall in American history. They came to vote on the city’s six proposals for rebuilding Ground Zero. But instead, the people rejected the top down approach and successfully charted a new path forward. Their work determined what is at Ground Zero today. And their story is an example of what democracy can look like.

BROOKLYN MATTERS is a riveting look at how big real estate, politics, community voices, and the desperate need for jobs and affordable housing clash in one of the largest development proposals in the history of New York City. The film is important for anyone concerned with who has a voice and who has a vote in shaping the future of our cities.

An intoxicating look inside New York's legendary Chelsea Hotel through the witty, irreverent lens of composer Gerald Busby. ​Swirling around Busby's humorous and heart-breaking life, from his Baptist childhood in Texas to his salvation as a gifted piano prodigy; from gay witch hunts at Yale University in the 50s to gay liberation in New York City in the 70s; from a creative, energetic life inside the legendary Chelsea Hotel to the dawn of the AIDS epidemic, the death of his partner of seventeen years, his descent into crack addiction, the loss of his friends, his money, his career, the film is also a journey through New York's most exhilarating and devastating decades, the 1970s - 1990s. Using interviews and archival footage, it vividly captures the zeitgeist of New York's most creative and tumultuous years, the years that witnessed the dawn of the gay sex revolution, the birth of the disco scene, the world of all-night bars, drugs, street cruising and the anonymous sex in the trucks.