Films by Filmmaker

Isabel Hill

Isabel Hill is the founder of Building History Productions, an independent production company that specializes in video productions on urban issues. In addition to being a filmmaker, she is a city planner and historian with over thirty years of experience working on urban issues and advocacy throughout the country. Hill turned to filmmaking over fifteen years ago with a desire to democratize the development and planning process and to inform community residents and civic leaders of the larger truth behind what creates, and sometimes destroys, their neighborhoods. Her first urban planning documentary Made in Brooklyn, about manufacturing in New York City, won numerous awards, including the Eliot Willensky Award, and aired on public television. Her most recent film Brooklyn Matters is a timely examination of the Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn and its implications for other American cities. In both Made in Brooklyn and Brooklyn Matters, Hill looks beyond common public understanding of urban development to expose the complicated cogs of politics and power that shape the places where we live and work.