Jetty (Bellwether, Free to Members)

A new nonfiction film by Sam Fleischner (STAND CLEAR OF THE CLOSING DOORS, WAH DO DEM), JETTY documents two years of the decades-long federal project of installing granite jetties to protect the Rockaways—a coastal neighborhood of Queens, New York—from the effects of diminishing beaches.

Interspersing footage of the people and machines at work with observations from local residents about living where the city meets the water, the film is shot on Super 16mm, accentuating the tactility of all the elements at play: rocks, sand, metal, water, and celluloid.

With subtle sound design featuring a pensive, sometimes playful score by Animal Collective, JETTY looks with equanimity at human attempts to out-engineer nature as it reflects on the way that a sense of place informs our lives.

“Fleischner conveys the power and the scope of the environmental project, which was designed to protect the shoreline from future storms and the neighborhood from flooding, with an intimate, hands-on aesthetic, yielding an immersively contemplative experience. Nonetheless, the resulting film also thrums with the civic, geological, and humanistic implications of its subject.”

–Richard Brody, New Yorker