Welcome to Independent Lens.
I'm Pete Schwaba, host of
Wisconsin Public Television's Director's Cut.
Tonight's film takes us to New York,
more specifically the Hamptons,
the wealthiest zip code in America,
where one activist takes on the 1%
in an effort to protect her values and the land she loves
in the film "Conscience Point."
To most of us our neighborhood or community is home,
to some it's a commodity or a place to turn a profit.
In "Conscience Point" we meet Becky Hill-Genia
a determined, Long Island resident and activist
trying to help her community survive
amid gentrification and sprawl.
Hill-Genia has watched in horror
as Native American burial grounds
are destroyed by developers.
She's also observed so much gentrification
that there are fewer and fewer places
for those who work for the wealthy to live,
forcing them to commute from great distances
to work for minimal pay.
For Hill-Genia, land is sacred
and the use of it is a moral issue.
"Conscience Point" is directed by Treva Wurmfeld
whose first film was the critically acclaimed "Shepard & Dark"
about playwright and actor Sam Shepard.
Wurmfeld met Hill-Genia in 2014 and was immediately struck by
her tenacity and fearlessness in taking on the more powerful.
Sometimes a documentarian meets someone and immediately knows
their story needs to be told.
"Conscience Point" starts now, on Wisconsin Public Television,
your home for independent film.