With the Ikea Red Hook set to open next month, a documentary called A Hole in a Fence by D.W. Young will be having its first local screenings soon, including one in Red Hook on May 29 at the Waterfront Museum Barge on Pier 44 (next to the Fairway). It will also screen on Wednesday, May 21 at 6PM as part of the New Filmmakers Documentary Series at the Anthology Film Archives, 32 2nd Avenue in Manhattan.

Here’s a bit from the email we got:

A HOLE IN A FENCE, D.W. Young’s entertaining and insightful look at the changing landscape of Red Hook, Brooklyn, will screen on May 29 aboard the Waterfront Museum barge on Pier 44 in Red Hook. It will be followed by a discussion on the future of the New York Waterfront entitled: Lessons Learned from the Graving Dock. Panelists include: Tom Angotti- Director, Center for Community Planning & Development, Hunter College/ CUNY; Adam Green- Founder and Executive Director, Rocking the Boat; David Sharps- Captain and President, The Waterfront Museum; Roberta E. Weisbrod, Ph.D., Principal, Partnership for Sustainable Ports and D.W. Young, the film’s director. The film will also screen on May 21 as part of Anthology Film Archives’ NewFilmmakers Series.

Chronicling the shifting fortunes of a unique abandoned lot in Red Hook, Brooklyn, A HOLE IN A FENCE explores the complicated issues of development, class and identity facing the city’s most populous borough. It’s the story of a vanished homeless community and the young architect who documented it; of a real urban farm run by local kids amidst a landscape of industrial decay; of young graffiti writers losing their stomping grounds; of the arrival of a controversial Ikea megastore; of a photographer’s vision of nature’s renewal; of the doomed struggle to save a rare part of the neighborhood’s working waterfront; and of a filmmaker’s discovery of a fleeting, hidden world on the other side of a rusty old fence.

Being very familiar with the subject of the documentary, we found it especially fascinating. More about the film here.