toxic waste – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

TEENAGE WASTELAND – Review by Sarah Ward

November 19, 2025August 27, 2026 Sarah Ward amanda mcbaine, Christopher Passig, documentaries, jesse moss, Middletown High School, Teenage Wasteland, toxic waste

Teenage Wasteland’s 90s-era high schoolers were 80s kids first. As they grew up across both decades, they danced towards adolescence and then ran at adulthood during one of teen cinema’s heydays, as well as in a prime time for films about life-changing teachers. Their tale, so that of Middletown High School pupils Rachel Raimist, Mike Regan, Jeff Dutemple, David Birmingham and others in New York’s Orange County, could easily give rise to a throwback movie perfectly of their coming-of-age period: about a ragtag gang of disparate and rebellious youths brought together in a single class (not Saturday detention, but The Breakfast Club does quickly spring to mind) and the educator who taught them not just to seize the day Dead Poets Society-style but to truly care about the world that they live in.

Festivals Reviews

MIDDLETOWN (Sundance FF 2025) – Review by Leslie Combemale

February 3, 2025February 2, 2025 Leslie Combemale (Sundance FF 2025), amanda mcbaine, David Birmingham, documentary, Fred Isseks, Garbage Gangsters and Greed, Jeff Dutemple, jesse moss, media studie, Middletown New York, Mike Regan, Rachel Raimist, toxic waste, Trey Long

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!