Brooklyn Castle is a documentary about I.S. 318 – an inner-city school where more than 65 percent of students are from homes with incomes below the federal poverty level – that also happens to have the best, most winning junior high school chess team in the country. (If Albert Einstein, who was rated 1800, were to join the team, he’d only rank fifth best.) Chess has transformed the school from one cited in 2003 as a “school in need of improvement” to one of New York City’s best. But a series of recession-driven public school budget cuts now threaten to undermine those hard-won successes.
Green Bank, West Virginia is home to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, which houses the world’s most sensitive radio telescope. SMALL TOWN UNIVERSE explores not only the science behind the center, but also what it brings to Green Bank. Requiring a radio-silent environment to conduct its research, the center supports a community removed from the omnipresent impact of digital devices, in addition to industry and employment opportunities not commonly found in rural communities. But as the observatory faces potential closure, there poses a threat to the community’s way of life: the local economy supported by the jobs it creates, the well-being of the individuals who have sought Green Bank as a necessary health refuge for the lack of radio waves, and the incalculable scientific benefits it provides to the field of astronomy.