Screening | Cooked: Survival by Zip Code

NYU’s Institute for Public Knowledge invites you to DOC NYC’s world premiere of the film Cooked: Survival by Zip Code, featuring director Judith Helfand and author Eric Klinenberg, with two special screenings on Sunday, November 11, and Wednesday, November 14.

In July 1995, Chicago was hit by a record heat wave that claimed the lives of 739 residents, primarily among the elderly, African Americans and those living in poverty. Using this tragedy as a jumping-off point, but referencing other extreme weather catastrophes like Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, Cooked provocatively reframes the politics of disaster to encompass extreme inequity, arguing that economically disadvantaged communities should be preventatively treated as disasters taking place in slow motion.

Judith Helfand is a documentary filmmaker best known for her ability to take on the dark and cynical worlds of chemical exposure, heedless corporate behavior, and environmental injustice and make them personal, resonant, and even entertaining. Her films include the The Uprising of ’34 (1995, co-directed with George Stoney), the Sundance award-winning Blue Vinyl (2002), and Everything’s Cool (2007), both co-directed with Daniel B. Gold. She has taught the art of documentary film at New York University, New School, and was the Filmmaker-in-Residence at University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies in 2007 and 2009. As much an educator and field-builder as she is a filmmaker, Judith co-founded Working Films, one of the nation’s first non-profits dedicated to engagement, and Chicken & Egg Pictures, a non-profit film fund dedicated to supporting women documentary directors. Her latest film is Cooked, a feature documentary about the politics of disaster for which she was awarded a MacArthur grant.

Eric Klinenberg is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University. He’s also editor of the journal Public Culture. He is the author of several books, including Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone (Penguin, 2012), Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America’s Media (Metropolitan, 2007), Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life (Crown, 2018) and Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago (U Chicago Press, 2003), which won six scholarly and literary prizes and was the basis for Cooked: Survival by Zip Code. In addition to his books and scholarly articles, Klinenberg appears often on public radio and television, and he has contributed to popular publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Time, Fortune, Rolling Stone, The London Review of Books, Le Monde Diplomatique, and the radio program This American Life.

Co-sponsored by Rebuild by Design