Brooklyn Castle
Short film Completed 2012
Director
Katie Dellamaggiore
Doc Society helped with
Impact
Went to Good Pitch
Runtime: 101 minutes
Follow the film
Brooklyn Castle takes an intimate look at a year in the lives of several young teens at Brooklyn, New York’s Intermediate School 318 – where 65% of students are from homes living below the federal poverty level – that also happens to have best junior high chess team in the country. The school’s chess and other afterschool programs have given its students a chance for success they likely would not have had otherwise and it has transformed I.S. 318 from a school once cited as being “in need of improvement” to one of New York City’s best. Now, budget cuts threaten those strides.
Outreach Work Supported
Hire of an outreach director to pursue Afterschool Activity funding and screenings with potential partners.
Crew
Katie Dellamaggiore
Director
Katie Dellamaggiore is a documentary producer and director whose work has appeared on MTV, A&E, HBO/Cinemax and VH1. Over the course of her career, she has held various production and outreach roles on award-winning documentaries including 39 Pounds of Love, To Die in Jerusalem, 51 Birch Street and American Teen. Katie co-produced After the Storm, a nonprofit theater and film project that used art to revitalize the lives of young people in post-Katrina New Orleans, and directed, produced and shot UR Life Online for A&E Classroom, which explored sexual solicitation and cyber bullying and received an Emmy nomination for Single Camera Editing. In 2010, she and her husband, Nelson, co-founded television and film production company Rescued Media. Brooklyn Castle, Katie’s feature directorial debut, has received support from IFP Independent Film Week 2010, Chicken & Egg Films and the Fledgling Fund.
