For a special Earth Week program, CFF co-hosted a screening of Cooked: Survival by Zip Code (2020, dir. Judith Helfand) in collaboration with WE ACT for Environmental Justice at the Maysles Documentary Center. A post-screening conversation highlighted current measures combatting extreme heat in New York City, including Elijah Hutchinson (Executive Director of the NYC Mayor’s Office of Climate & Environmental Justice), Kim Knowlton (DrPH, Assistant Clinical Professor of Environmental Health Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University), Leslie Vasquez (Clean Air Project Organizer, South Bronx Unite), and Caleb Smith as moderator (MPA, Environmental Science and Policy, Resiliency Coordinator, WE ACT).

About the film: In the summer of 1995, Chicago experienced an unthinkable disaster, when extremely high humidity and a layer of heat-retaining pollution drove the heat index up to more than 126 degrees. Cooked: Survival by Zip Code tells the story of this tragic heatwave, the most traumatic in U.S. history, in which 739 citizens died over the course of just a single week, most of them poor, elderly, and African American.

When peeled away from the shocking headlines, the story reveals the less newsworthy but long-term crisis of pernicious poverty, economic and social isolation, and racism. Cooked is a story about life, death, and the politics of crisis in an American city that asks the question: Was this a one-time tragedy, or an appalling trend? 

In 2023, New York City was ranked as the most intense heat island in the country during the hottest year on record. But heat mortality is not inevitable. Audiences joined us for a conversation with city leadership, community advocates, and researchers working to ensure communities stay safe in a warming world.

Photos courtesy of Oliver Jaskowski and Jesse R. Tendler