Sundance Review: Middletown Commemorates a High School Class That Challenged Authority with Truth

      In 1991, Fred Isseks, a teacher at Middletown High School, initiated an elective course that attracted the interest of every student. Titled “Electronic English,” the class engaged teenagers with new media and innovative art forms, granting them access to camcorders, editing equipment, and digital photography. Daily activities included filming music videos, creating horror films, and hosting talk shows, allowing students to hone their broadcasting and rap skills in a setting that fostered creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking, which were often absent in other classes.

      However, Isseks was not merely supervising fun and imparting technical knowledge. After discovering toxic waste seeping into a local landfill, he inspired his students to undertake an environmental video project aimed at investigating the town's overlooked issues of corruption and neglect. Over six years, his classes produced four documentaries on the topic, the most recent being titled Garbage, Gangsters, and Greed, which showcased their journalistic efforts to expose a complex network of political corruption and organized crime in their otherwise quiet town, located 60 miles north of New York City.

      Was the class successful? This is a question filmmakers Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss explore, over three decades later, from various perspectives in a heartfelt, nostalgic documentary that largely fulfills the intriguing premise. After documenting ambitious, politically engaged high school students in Boys State and its gender-swapped counterpart Girls State, the filmmakers remained inspired by the classroom environment so much that they created a makeshift one in Los Angeles, replicating the exact settings and equipment Isseks had at his disposal. This recreated space serves as a nostalgia-filled meeting point for four of Isseks’ most dedicated students (Rachel Raimist, Jeff Dutemple, David Birmingham, and Mike Regan) to reunite and reflect on their activist experiences and the subsequent changes (or lack thereof) that occurred after they graduated and departed their hometown.

      Each member of the group came from different backgrounds and had various motivations for enrolling in Isseks’ class––in Regan’s case, he was present merely because he forget to sign up. Nonetheless, like most inquisitive teenagers, they were excited to rally around a passionate adult who encouraged their creative impulses and expressed concern for the health of their community. Although students often referred to him as “Crazy Fred,” he was viewed as the cool hippie teacher, even fulfilling a fatherly role for Dutemple, whose biological father had struggled with alcoholism and served time in prison. After Isseks invited a guest to discuss the brown water contaminating local farmers’ properties, the class became captivated and wanted to investigate the Wallkill landfill themselves.

      Thanks to Isseks’ preservation of most of his students’ recordings and projects, McBaine and Moss have access to a wealth of grainy VHS footage. This includes field trips to the landfill, where the class encountered green ponds, bubbling streams, and the odor of decay firsthand. As Raimist remarks, it may have seemed foolish to be wandering through restricted areas filled with thousands of tons of toxic waste, but these explorations and interviews with local farmers affected by the hazardous substances provided a foundation for Electronic English to explore deeper issues.

      Middletown unfolds in a manner similar to a news documentary––featuring additional footage revealing the landfill's alarming condition, interviews with local officials, and recordings of community meetings. The project effectively functioned as a broadcasting workshop, allowing students to hold microphones, report on-site, and engage with prominent community members and lawmakers about pressing issues. Tensions during these discussions are often palpable––city council members and newspaper editors, anticipating a simple interview in a makeshift studio, become uneasy as teenagers pose challenging questions and hold them accountable for inconsistencies.

      Witnessing this is inspiring. While Isseks provided the framework and tools, the students elevated the cause, motivated by their strong feelings regarding governmental negligence in their community. Over time, they gained momentum by collaborating with a wildlife pathologist, while Isseks received anonymous tips from dubious characters claiming to possess information and evidence of a broader conspiracy. The students––later dubbed the “Toxic Avengers” when their story attracted national media attention––were impressionable and committed to their teacher’s initial mission, but they did not follow blindly: they confronted their representatives and demonstrated what a complacent town could become when it chose to take action.

      In some respects, Middletown serves as a natural progression for McBaine and Moss. When they set out to create their 2024 summer-camp documentary Girls State, their aim was to reverse the narrative of Boys State by documenting how effectively a group of high school girls could establish a mock government. However, midway through filming, they discovered a more compelling story thread: one participant had abandoned her political ambitions to investigate the unequal treatment and standards between the two camps. Although an unexpected twist, it’s clear McBaine and Moss appreciated the organic narrative and the opportunity to spotlight someone embracing journalism's potential for impact.

      This drive to uncover the truth and instigate