From award-winning filmmaker Judith Helfand, COOKED reveals the ways in which class, race, and zip code predetermine unequal response and recovery to environmental disaster.
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Chicago suffered the worst heat disaster in U.S history in 1995, when 739 residents—mostly elderly and black—died over the course of one week. As COOKED links the deadly heat wave's devastation back to the underlying manmade disaster of structural racism, it delves deep into one of our nation's biggest growth industries: Disaster Preparedness.
Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Judith Helfand (Blue Vinyl, Everything's Cool), uses her signature serious-yet-quirky connect-the-dots-style to forge inextricable connections between the cataclysmic natural disasters we're willing to see and prepare for and the slow-motion disasters we're not. That is, until an extreme weather event hits and they are made exponentially more deadly and visible.
But whether it was the heat wave in Chicago or Hurricanes Katrina, Sandy, Harvey, Irma and Maria, all of these disasters share something key: they reveal the ways in which class, race, and zip code predetermine who was living on the edge to start with, who gets hurt the worst, who recovers and bounces back—and who doesn't. In COOKED, Helfand challenges herself and others to truly see and respond to the invisible man-made disasters taking place in towns and cities across the country before the next "natural" disaster hits.
COOKED is an adaptation of HEAT WAVE: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago (2002), Eric Klinenberg's groundbreaking book
82 minutes
Directed by Judith Helfand
Produced by Judith Helfand, Fenell Doremus
Editors: Simeon Hunter, David E. Simpson
Original Music: T. Griffin
Cinematography: Tod Lending, Stanley J. Staniski, Keith Walker
Executive Producers for ITVS: Sally Jo Fifer, Lois Vossen
A co-production of Judith Helfand Productions, Kartemquin Films and Independent Television Service (ITVS) with funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB)
"COOKED chronicles the painful truth that waiting for the government can be hazardous to your health. The twin vulnerability of poverty and race placed African Americans at special risk in the 1995 Chicago heat wave. In America, zip code is more important than genetic code and some people and communities have the wrong complexion for protection."
Dr. Robert D. Bullard, Professor, Urban Planning and Environmental Policy, Texas Southern University, Author, Race, Place, and Environmental Justice After Hurricane Katrina
"This film is searing, smart and insightful...The film asks important questions with humor, humility, and humanity. This film can be used in a wide range of classrooms with social and ethnic studies and health policy as well as in public contexts of churches, community groups, and other venues."
Julie Sze, Professor of American Studies, Founding Director, Environmental Justice Project, University of California - Davis, Author, Noxious New York: The Racial Politics of Urban Health and Environmental Justice
"This is an important film that makes the often missed connections between poverty and environmental harms. Simple solutions to environmental threats focused solely on environmental responses will leave too many people in danger. I highly recommend this film for broadening awareness of the links between environmental justice, social justice, and poverty."
Nancy C. Loeb, Clinical Associate Professor of Law, Director, Environmental Advocacy Clinic, Northwestern University
"Provides a sobering look back at one of the worst natural disasters in Chicago's recent history while shedding much-needed light on the slow-moving, man-made crisis of socioeconomic inequality that threatens not only the most vulnerable zip codes in Chicago, but cities and towns across the country."
Jay Koziarz, Curbed Chicago
"A much-needed slap in the face to the American people...It's time that those of us with privilege do something to help those who don't."
Lorry Kikta, Film Threat