Michael Galinsky (born 1969) is an American filmmaker, cinematographer, photographer, and musician who has produced and directed a number of documentaries, several of them in collaboration with his now-wife, Suki Hawley.
[8] Galinsky served as producer and director or co-director of Radiation (1999), Horns and Halos (2002), Code 33 (2005), Miami Manhunt (2008), Battle for Brooklyn (2011), and Who Took Johnny (2013).
He has worked as a cinematographer, cameraman, or director of photography on all of the above films, as well as on Half-Cocked (1994), Texas Gold (2005), August in the Empire State (2006), Lucky Lake (2006), and Repeat Attenders (2014).
At the same time, if the knowledge of craft overwhelms the intuition one ends up with something that looks and feels like a commercial.” He has cited the Maysles brothers and John Cassavetes as major influences.
[11] In addition to producing and distributing Galinsky and Hawley's films, Rumur has created music videos for such performers as Alana Newman and Jacob Miller.
It has been described as a “cult indie music film.”[2] Reviewer Mike Everleth called it “a right-on piece of genius” and “the definitive early ’90s indie rock film...a fictional story starring real life indie rock musicians, many playing either themselves or characters based on themselves.”[14] A writer for the Austin Chronicle described Half-Cocked as a “tasty nugget of mid-Nineties apathy,” noting that “this isn't some preachy flick of finicky teens making it in the world” but, rather, “a time capsule full of heart and hope, and underneath all the drama, right there in grainy black and white, is the real documentary of coming of age in the transition time between angst and responsibility.”[15] Like Half-Cocked, Radiation (1999) is a fictional narrative shot in a documentary style.
[15] Directed by Galinsky and Hawley, Horns and Halos (2002) is a documentary about “the intrigue surrounding the publication of the controversial book Fortunate Son, a biography of George W. Bush,” which its first publisher, St. Martin's Press, withdrew from sale “after controversy arose over a passage accusing Bush of being a convicted drug user”; the book was then re-published by a small publishing house, Soft Skull Press.
[17] On September 11, 2011, article, Galinsky recalled that on September 10, 2001, “my partners and I shot the final scene of our film, Horns and Halos,” and “stayed up late that night working with the footage.” The next morning, when the first plane hit the World Trade Center, “the impact caused our cats to jump off the bed and our dog to sit up, which roused us.” After finding out what was happening, they walked to Fort Greene Park to “see it for real from the top of the hill.” Galinsky had “consciously not taken my camera that morning as I left the house” because he felt “that taking pictures would take me out of the moment, or that it would be exploitative in some way.” He then made his way to Downtown Brooklyn to donate blood.
However, by Sept. 14 or 15 the drumbeat of patriotism had become deafening.” As a result, Galinsky and Hawley “had a hard time getting anyone interested in a documentary that was even mildly critical of Bush....We finished the film on March 5, 2002 and our daughter was born five hours later.” Galinsky closes by lamenting the “outsized sense of patriotism” that ended up costing America “thousands of young men and women” and “trillions of dollars in resources.”[18] Code 33 (2005) is set in the summer of 2003 and follows two Miami cops' pursuit of a serial rapist in Little Havana.
It depicts the long-term legal battle waged by owners and residents whose property was at risk of being condemned to make way for the Atlantic Yards project, a plan to build 16 skyscrapers and a basketball arena for the New Jersey Nets in Brooklyn.
[21] A writer for the Underground Film Journal called it an “insanely epic documentary” and “a classic American tale of the underdog fighting entrenched moneyed and political interests.”[22] It has also been described as “powerhouse documentary” and “a ’70s Sidney Lumet film made real” that “gives us the perfect everyman hero to root for at its center....If there ever were a film to inspire the seemingly powerless masses to rise up and fight back against big business and the politicians who lie in bed with them, it would be Battle for Brooklyn.”[23] The Chicago Reader called the film “valuable for its cold-eyed look at how real estate interests work the levers of power in state and city government, dangling the vague promise of job creation in exchange for sweetheart deals that drain the public coffers.”[24] Hawley told IndyWeek that “conservatives love the movie and liberals love the movie, because everybody hates kleptocracy....They hate corruption.
[29] After a screening at the 2019 True/False Film Festival, Courtney Symone Staton, filmmaker, and UNC student, came on stage during the Q&A to read a statement from the activists leading the protest captured in The Commons.
[32][33] One critic has commented that Galinsky captured, in these pictures, “in a beautifully off-kilter high-flash way, the cool ugliness of suburban style.”[34] Another has written that “What makes these photos so appealing and oddly touching is the nostalgia bound up in them....They are from a not so distant past....The collection is imbued with a sense of the everyday melancholy but also manage to be a pop-anthropological feast.”[35] A collection of some of these photographs, Malls Across America, was published by Steidl in October 2013.
[37] Since June 2009, Galinsky has regularly contributed articles and videos to The Local, a New York Times sub-website about Fort Greene news.
[20][44] The American Library Association named Battle for Brooklyn one of fifteen notable films of 2012[44][45] Galinsky won a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship in 2012.
[8] Galinsky and Hawley lived for many years on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, then moved to Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.