'Battle For Brooklyn' Filmmaker Speaks Out On Occupy Wall Street

Historians have long said that those looking to decode the present should get busy consulting the past.

So it goes for Clinton Hill residents Suki Hawley and Michael Galinsky's Atlantic Yards documentary, Battle For Brooklyn, which has grown in stature from a project about the ultimately unsuccessful effort against a massive development to one with renewed relevance in the continuing Occupy Wall Street protests that have spread from Zuccotti Park and beyond.

"Atlantic Yards represents everything that Occupy Wall Street is mad about," Galinsky said. "The lack of jobs, housing, all of the broken promises."

Indeed, the documentary—which begins a semi-permanent weekly run at Brooklyn Heights Cinema starting tonight at 7 p.m.—and its theme of democratic resistance to the powers-that-be seems to have universal appeal, leading to packed moviehouses from Cleveland to Los Angeles.

"The same issues that are taking place in New York are going on there," he said, referencing the film's popularity among Angelinos opposed their own Atlantic Yards-like development—a proposed football stadium approved by L.A.'s City Council in August.

But it is the parallels between the grassroots resistance against Atlantic Yards development and the growing Occupy Wall Street protests that seemed to create renewed buzz about a film Galinsky insists is still "about people, not issues."

"It's a huge victory in helping shape the narrative," he said.

**Correction: The film will be screened on Wednesdays at 7 p.m. only.**Battle For Brooklyn will screen at Brooklyn Heights Cinema, 70 Henry St., on Wed. at 7 p.m.