EMBODYING URBAN COASTAL KNOWLEDGE

MANAGED RETREAT by Nathan Kensinger. 2018. 18 min.

A portrait of three NYC neighborhoods that were purchased by the New York State government in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, to be demolished and returned to nature as part of the city’s first ‘managed retreat’ from rising sea levels. Filmmaker in person.

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AS IF SAND WERE STONE by Ben Mendelsohn. 2019. 35 min.

An essay documentary examining the making and remaking of urban waterfronts in New York City. Narrated by landscape architect Gena Wirth, the film analyzes underwater dredging as a key infrastructural process in the production of urban space. The film combines observational footage of New York’s massive harbor deepening project with a series of self-reflexive research spirals that take place within the director's imagined computer desktop. As a result, the project not only explores the making of urban coastal landscapes, but also how these sedimentary landscapes are entangled with digitally mediated spaces of discourse and image. World Premiere.

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WATER AND POWER by Pat O’Neill. 1989. 57 min.

This 1989 masterpiece by Pat O’Neill is a moving meditation on industrialization, focusing on the dystopic desert created by Los Angeles’s vast water consumption.