New York documentarian Richard Sandler will be screening two of his films, Brave New York and Sway, at the 6B Garden on August 22.

Brave New York is a free form documentary that loosely chronicles the last 12 years of intense change in the east village “hood.” From the reopening of a newly curfewed Tompkins Square Park and Wigstock in ‘92, to the destruction of the cherished Loisaida Community Gardens, to the yuppie invasions of the dot com years, to the present era, indelibly stamped with post-9/11 grief, this durable, lusty neighborhood survives in spite of a real estate gold rush that has excluded all but the well-to-do. The movie’s main voices are those of the artists and street people whose wisdom and commentaries upon the dominant culture give us pause amidst the speedy approach of a “Brave New World.”

Gothamist has a gallery of photographs by Sandler.

[via ill soul]

Best known for his work documenting war and suffering around the world, photographer Q. Sakamaki’s new book, Tompkins Square Park, shows his earlier work in a place so close yet so far away: the Lower East Side well before there were $10 million penthouses on Avenue C. The NY Times talks with Sakamaki about his experiences documenting the community’s struggle against gentrification and sometimes simply to survive.

“Upon arriving in the city in 1986 he settled in the East Village, where he was alternately charmed and horrified by what he found. Dilapidated and abandoned buildings lined the streets. Entire blocks were filled with little more than rubble and bricks. Heroin was sold in candy stores, and gunshots sounded in the night. In the morning he sometimes spotted the bodies of people who had been killed or had died of overdoses.”

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