2023 Woodstock Film Festival: A Conversation With Filmmaker Katja Esson About Razing Liberty Square

INSIDE+OUT UPSTATE NY is celebrating the 24th Annual Woodstock Film Festival with a series of interviews showcasing the filmmakers in this year’s festival. Today we catch up with director Katja Esson to discuss her powerful documentary, Razing Liberty Square, the urgent and clear-eyed portrait of a Miami community poised at the epicenter of America’s ongoing climate and housing crises.

Built on a ridge in 1937, Liberty Square was one of the first public housing projects in the U.S. During its heyday, the neighborhood functioned as a near-utopia for working- and middle-class Black families, but with a decline in city funding due to white flight during the 1960s, the community slipped into poverty. Today, with sea level rise endangering the low-lying beaches, private developers are exploiting the fact that Liberty Square sits on the highest and driest point in Miami to establish commercial retail spaces and mixed-income housing. Director Katja Esson zeroes in on various community leaders—some in favor of redevelopment, others against it—each of whom is trying to shape the neighborhood to reflect their respective ideals. As the depiction of issues currently facing many American cities, this documentary is an arresting, nuanced reckoning with the impacts of climate gentrification.

Katja Esson is a German-born filmmaker based in Miami. She received an Academy Award nomination for her documentary Ferry Tales, which premiered on HBO in 2004. Her other award-winning films include Vertical Traveler, Hole in the Sky, and the docudrama Hooker, Harlot, Whore: Stories of Prostitution, all of which premiered on Arte. Her film Poetry of Resilience was nominated for the Cinema for Peace Award in 2012, and Skydancer premiered on PBS in 2013. Katja was awarded the Simons Fellowship of the Humanities in 2007 and her work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Knight Foundation, ITVS, IDA Enterprise, NYSCA, the Redford Center, Sundance, and the Ford Foundation.

INSIDE+OUT catches up with Katja to talk about her documentary, what makes a great documentary director and her next project. Let’s meet Katja!

INSIDE+OUT: Tell us about your latest film, which will be shown at this year’s festival.

Katja Esson: I am so happy to be back in Woodstock! I love this festival; it has seen my growth as a filmmaker and has been my film festival home for many years.

Here is the story of Razing Liberty Square: 

Miami is ground zero for sea-level rise. When residents of the historic Liberty Square public housing project learn about a $300 million revitalization plan for their neighborhood, which has long suffered from disinvestment, they know that this sudden interest comes from the fact that their neighborhood is located on the highest-and-driest ground in the city. Now, they must prepare to fight a new form of racial injustice – Climate Gentrification.

RAZING LIBERTY SQUARE is a character-driven verité documentary that weaves personal stories in and out of the larger social justice narrative of Climate Gentrification. Foremost, it is about a community fighting to save itself from being erased in a rapidly changing Miami. The question of where and how we live, who must stay or go and how climate change exacerbates the existing inequity in our nation’s cities has never been more relevant.

What was your journey in the film industry?

To be honest, I always thought I wanted to work in theater. Film, let alone documentary, was never what I dreamed of doing. My very first job in the film industry was as a production assistant on 2Live Crew Hip Hop music videos. I had just come to Miami from Germany to study film and theater at the University of Miami and my English was not very good. On the set, I did not understand the lyrics and kept asking the director of photography (DP) what 2Live Crew would sing about. But he refused to tell me; that’s how raunchy the lyrics were. We filmed all these videos in the late 1980s in Liberty City, in the exact same places where RAZING LIBERTY SQUARE takes place.

While studying, I worked my way up through all the departments, always thinking that I would do narrative films. In the mid-1990s, I moved to NYC and it was there that I found documentary film, or better, it found me. There were just so many stories that I wanted to tell so many fascinating people that I wanted to share with the world. So, a friend and I bought a used video camera together and just did it. After the first documentary, I knew I had found my voice.

What was your most rewarding or the most challenging project to date?

No doubt Razing Liberty Square is the most challenging: as a total outsider trying to earn the trust of a community in a city that does not care about documentaries, going up against a powerful developer during the pandemic… And it has also been the most rewarding that during our five years of filming together, the protagonists’ growing trust and collaboration have fiercely pushed me to make this film.

What are your thoughts on technology and the changing landscape of the TV and film industry?

Oh man, I don’t even know where to start with Ai! Thank God, the stories that I am drawn to are about authentic moments with real people.

What is one question you’re constantly asked, or what’s the biggest misconception about what you do?

I always smile when people tell me, “Oh, you make films!” My niece is an actress, or my godson is an actor – and then I explain what a documentary is.

Can you put your finger on what makes a great Director and who inspires you?

The people in my films inspire me. Their courage, their resilience, their generosity. I think a great documentary director needs to be curious about everything and able to really… really listen.

What are you working on now that you’re excited about?

I am excited about a film that I am doing with Mohawk filmmaker Katsitsionni Fox, called KANENON: WE – ORIGINAL SEEDS, about heirloom seeds and three indigenous women who reclaim their sacred responsibility as seedkeepers.

If you could have one superpower, what would it be?

I think as a documentary filmmaker, I already must have some superpowers.

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About the Woodstock Film Festival
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Founded in 2000, the Woodstock Film Festival (WFF) is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization that nurtures and supports emerging and established filmmakers, sharing their creative voices through an annual festival and year-round programming to promote culture, diversity, community, educational opportunities and economic growth.

WFF provides innovative mentoring and inspired educational programs benefitting filmmakers, students and diverse audiences while serving as a powerful cultural and economic engine for New York’s Hudson Valley and beyond. Such efforts have consistently resulted in the festival being hailed as one of the top regional film festivals worldwide. The Woodstock Film Festival is an Oscar®-qualifying festival in the short film categories – Live Action Short Film, Animated Short Film, and Documentary Short Film.

 

Now in its 24th year, 2023 promises to as exciting as ever! 2023 lineup and Tickets HERE.
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