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Cooked: Survival by ZIP Code

Environments & Ecologies • 1h 21m

Directed by Judith Helfand • Documentary • 2020 • 82 minutes

Chicago suffered the worst heat disaster in U.S history in 1995, when 739 residents--mostly elderly and black-died over the course of one week. As Cooked: Survival by ZIP Code links the deadly heat wave's devastation back to the underlying manmade disaster of structural racism, it delves deep into one of our nation's biggest growth industries: Disaster Preparedness.

Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Judith Helfand (Blue Vinyl, Everything's Cool), uses her signature serious-yet-quirky connect-the-dots-style to forge inextricable connections between the cataclysmic natural disasters we're willing to see and prepare for and the slow-motion disasters we're not. That is, until an extreme weather event hits and they are made exponentially more deadly and visible.

But whether it was the heat wave in Chicago or Hurricanes Katrina, Sandy, Harvey, Irma and Maria, all of these disasters share something key: they reveal the ways in which class, race, and zip code predetermine who was living on the edge to start with, who gets hurt the worst, who recovers and bounces back--and who doesn't. In Cooked: Survival by ZIP Code, Helfand challenges herself and others to truly see and respond to the invisible man-made disasters taking place in towns and cities across the country before the next 'natural' disaster hits.

COOKED is an adaptation of 'HEAT WAVE: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago' (2002), Eric Klinenberg's groundbreaking book.

Tags
1995 chicago heat wave, 9/11, absence of investment, access to healthy food, african-american studies, american (u.s.) studies, area studies, autopsies, billions of dollars, bullfrog films, business, civil rights, class, contract buying, cook county, cooked, cooling program, criminal justice, crisis intervention workers, cultural and ethnic studies, disaster capitalism, disaster preparedness, dr. edmund donoghue, eating healthy, economic geography, economic sociology, economics, emergency command center, environment, environmental justice, environmental sociology, epidemiologist, eric klinenberg book, expository, federal housing association, fema, fha, fresh moves, geography, gold coast, growing home, growth industry, healthcare, heat emergency plan, history, hurricane harvey, hurricane irma, hurricane katrina, hurricane maria, hurricane sandy, labor and economics, late 20th century (u.s. history), law and legal studies, life expectancy, linda rae murray, manmade disaster, mayor daley, medical examiner, medicine and nursing, mres, new madrid earthquake zone, non-violent deaths, north american studies, orrin williams, ovid, ovid_ca, paul dailey, politics and political science, poor communities, poverty, psychology and mental health, public health, race, race and racism, rebuilding levees, redlining, refrigerated trucks, s_0005, s_0043, s_0082, s_0085, s_0170, s_0231, s_0237, s_0260, s_0280, s_0467, s_0642, s_0646, s_0650, s_0652, s_0656, s_0667, section 8 housing, segregation, selling air conditioners, selling fans, social autopsy, social issues, social psychology, social studies, sociology, south side, structural racism, systemic racism, task force, title_c, u.s. history, under resourced, urban organic farm, urban sociology, urban studies, west side, white speculators, world trade center, zip code

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