Rachel Raimist

When done well, there’s little better than a documentary that features footage of folks in both the present and as they were decades ago. These stories are like time capsules, with multiple and often diverse perspectives and memories of the same experience. Such a movie requires a deft hand at both interviewing the subjects and editing compelling and pertinent scenes from the past. Middletown has all that, while telling a story of corporate greed, dangers to the environment and community, that is just as relevant today as it was 30 years ago. The film profiles the story of a group of teens in the early 1990s, who uncovered and documented the issues happening around toxic waste sites near Middletown New York. While in retrospect their film may look amateurish, and original filmmakers didn’t get the results they’d hoped for, it has left important and historic documentation of what can only be called “bad shit going down and intrepid idealistic kids trying to put an end to it”. Hurray for them!