Brett Story
História
Brett Story is a geographer and award-winning non-fiction filmmaker. Her films have screened at True/False, Oberhausen, Hot Docs, the Viennale, and Dok Leipzig, among other international festivals. Her second feature-length film, The Prison in Twelve Landscapes (2016) was awarded the Special Jury Prize at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival and was a nominee for Best Canadian Feature Documentary at the Canadian Screen Awards. Her interests across the fields of documentary and critical theory are expansive, and include experimental cinema and essay films, politics and aesthetics, racial capitalism and Marxist political economy, and visual geography. Brett holds a PhD in geography from the University of Toronto and is the author of a forthcoming book titled Prison Land: Mapping Carceral Power across Neoliberal America from the University of Minnesota Press. She was a 2016 Sundance Art of Nonfiction Fellow and is a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow.
Producer
The Amazon Labor Union (ALU) — a group of current and former Amazon workers in New York City’s Staten Island — takes on one of the world’s largest and most powerful companies in the fight to unionize.
Director
The Amazon Labor Union (ALU) — a group of current and former Amazon workers in New York City’s Staten Island — takes on one of the world’s largest and most powerful companies in the fight to unionize.
Editor
David Harvey discusses the spatial aspects of capital, his work in the US, and the development of Hudson Yards.
Director
David Harvey discusses the spatial aspects of capital, his work in the US, and the development of Hudson Yards.
Producer
Brett Story's visionary look at New York City as it braces for an uncertain future.
Director
Brett Story's visionary look at New York City as it braces for an uncertain future.
Producer
In St. Louis County, the home of police-shooting victim Michael Brown, a practice with a long history has become systematic: the operation of modern-day debtors’ prisons. A Debtors' Prison follows two plaintiffs in an unfolding court case, Samantha Jenkins and Meredith Walker, as they describe the matrix of controls that subjected them to incarceration for being poor.
Director
In St. Louis County, the home of police-shooting victim Michael Brown, a practice with a long history has become systematic: the operation of modern-day debtors’ prisons. A Debtors' Prison follows two plaintiffs in an unfolding court case, Samantha Jenkins and Meredith Walker, as they describe the matrix of controls that subjected them to incarceration for being poor.
Director
For nearly a decade, Amazon has recruited thousands of RVers for a seasonal labor unit called CamperForce. Adapted from the book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder
Producer
More people are imprisoned in the United States at this moment than in any other time or place in history, yet the prison itself has never felt further away or more out of sight. This is a film about the prison in which we never see an actual penitentiary. The film unfolds a cinematic journey through a series of landscapes across the USA where prisons do work and affect lives, from an anti-sex-offender pocket park in Los Angeles, to a congregation of ex-incarcerated chess players shut out of the formal labor market, to an Appalachian coal town betting its future on the promise of prison jobs.
Writer
More people are imprisoned in the United States at this moment than in any other time or place in history, yet the prison itself has never felt further away or more out of sight. This is a film about the prison in which we never see an actual penitentiary. The film unfolds a cinematic journey through a series of landscapes across the USA where prisons do work and affect lives, from an anti-sex-offender pocket park in Los Angeles, to a congregation of ex-incarcerated chess players shut out of the formal labor market, to an Appalachian coal town betting its future on the promise of prison jobs.
Director
More people are imprisoned in the United States at this moment than in any other time or place in history, yet the prison itself has never felt further away or more out of sight. This is a film about the prison in which we never see an actual penitentiary. The film unfolds a cinematic journey through a series of landscapes across the USA where prisons do work and affect lives, from an anti-sex-offender pocket park in Los Angeles, to a congregation of ex-incarcerated chess players shut out of the formal labor market, to an Appalachian coal town betting its future on the promise of prison jobs.
Writer
World in a City is a portrait of Toronto and the steps Torontonians are taking to create a society that welcomes and encourages new immigrants to flourish
Director
World in a City is a portrait of Toronto and the steps Torontonians are taking to create a society that welcomes and encourages new immigrants to flourish
Camera Operator
Billowing smoke pours from a bus, as a fire crew attempts to douse the flames. Long, aching lines of motionless vehicles sit at one of Israel’s hated checkpoints. Two men habitually pray on the road alongside their stopped car. A lone helicopter hovers overhead, reinforcing the reality of perpetual occupation. Roads Through Palestine is a cinematic portrait of life in the West Bank, and an intimate reflection on the geography of war. Directed by Brett Story with music by Stefan Christoff.
Director
Billowing smoke pours from a bus, as a fire crew attempts to douse the flames. Long, aching lines of motionless vehicles sit at one of Israel’s hated checkpoints. Two men habitually pray on the road alongside their stopped car. A lone helicopter hovers overhead, reinforcing the reality of perpetual occupation. Roads Through Palestine is a cinematic portrait of life in the West Bank, and an intimate reflection on the geography of war. Directed by Brett Story with music by Stefan Christoff.
Producer
A portrait of work, landscape and community in an era of globalization. In the rich fabric of Sarnia, Ontario's landscape— the bright sprawl of petrochemical plants, swollen hospital wards and crowded bars— one finds a microcosm of the 21st century. Tattooed men serving fries, basement musicians, boilermakers and volunteer firemen, heartbroken widows and an optimistic mayor - the lives of a diverse medley of characters intersect to reveal the dramas and contradictions of an industrial town out of sync with a post-industrial world. As the dystopian architecture of the petrochemical plants, squatted like crushed space stations just meters away from homes and schoolyards, give way to the spaces that make this city a community, we begin to see what it is that everyone seems so afraid to lose. Land of Destiny is a tender portrait of a working-class city in paralysis and a devastating investigation into when and for what people fight for.
Director
A portrait of work, landscape and community in an era of globalization. In the rich fabric of Sarnia, Ontario's landscape— the bright sprawl of petrochemical plants, swollen hospital wards and crowded bars— one finds a microcosm of the 21st century. Tattooed men serving fries, basement musicians, boilermakers and volunteer firemen, heartbroken widows and an optimistic mayor - the lives of a diverse medley of characters intersect to reveal the dramas and contradictions of an industrial town out of sync with a post-industrial world. As the dystopian architecture of the petrochemical plants, squatted like crushed space stations just meters away from homes and schoolyards, give way to the spaces that make this city a community, we begin to see what it is that everyone seems so afraid to lose. Land of Destiny is a tender portrait of a working-class city in paralysis and a devastating investigation into when and for what people fight for.
Director
In the spring of 2008, car wash workers throughout Los Angeles formed the Carwash Workers Organizing Committee of the United Steelworkers (USW), a precursor to eventual plans to unionize the informal workers of a multi-million dollar industry rampant with exploitation. Most of these workers are undocumented migrants from Central America whose aspirations have led them to washing cars in the city of angels. This experimental documentary, shot in super8 film, journeys into a city defined by as much by cars as it is immigrant labor to offer a quiet commentary on the relationship between class, place, and work.
Director
This 3-part musical odyssey features Montreal musician Alden Penner (formerly of the Unicorns) and Algerian refugee Abdelkader Belaouni, who is confined to his church-based sanctuary. Joining the two is a cast of music makers and co-conspirators. Their choreographed street rebellion becomes a poignant treatise on the meaning and political import of movement.
Editor
A meditation, in blue, on the city in winter.
Director
A meditation, in blue, on the city in winter.
Producer
Formerly incarcerated people reassemble their lives at The Castle, a singular housing facility and a supportive home base created by The Fortune Society.
Director
Formerly incarcerated people reassemble their lives at The Castle, a singular housing facility and a supportive home base created by The Fortune Society.
