''Brooklyn Castle'' (

2012 File:2012 Events Collage V3.png, From left, clockwise: The passenger cruise ship Costa Concordia lies capsized after the Costa Concordia disaster; Damage to Casino Pier in Seaside Heights, New Jersey as a result of Hurricane Sandy; People gather ...

) is a

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...

about

Intermediate School 318 Intermediate School 318 (IS 318; also known as the Eugenio Maria de Hostos School) is a public junior high school at 101 Walton Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York City.Anne Barnard and Dylan Loeb McClain (April 17, 2012)"At a Brooklyn S ...

, an inner-city public school in

Brooklyn, New York Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

. Where an after-school chess program, having both dedicated educators and a supportive community, has triumphed over deep budget cuts to build the most winning junior high school chess team in the country, and the first middle school team to win the United States Chess Federation's national high school championship. The film follows five of the school's chess team members for one year, from April 2009 to June 2010, and documents their challenges and triumphs both on and off the chessboard. Remake rights have been acquired by

Sony Pictures Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Sony Pictures or SPE, and formerly known as Columbia Pictures Entertainment, Inc.) is an American diversified multinational mass media and entertainment studio Conglomerate (company), conglom ...

and producer

Scott Rudin Scott Rudin (born July 14, 1958) is an American film, television, and theatre producer. His films include the Academy Award-winning Best Picture ''No Country for Old Men,'' as well as ''Uncut Gems'', '' Lady Bird, Fences, The Girl with the Dragon ...

. Rudin's other works include co-producing the acclaimed film ''

Searching for Bobby Fischer ''Searching for Bobby Fischer'', released in the United Kingdom as ''Innocent Moves'', is a 1993 American Drama (film and television), drama film written and directed by Steven Zaillian in his List of directorial debuts, directorial debut. Starr ...

'' (1993). ''Brooklyn Castle'' premiered at the South by Southwest (SXSW) film festival on March 11, 2012. Over the next several months it was shown during at least eleven other film festivals winning a total of three festival awards to date. The film was released to a limited number of U.S. theaters on October 19, 2012. ''Brooklyn Castle'' was aired on the

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...

series '' POV'' on October 7, 2013.

Reception

Currently, the film has a rating of 96% on

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, based on 45 reviews and an average score of 7.6/10.

References

External links

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Chess in the Schools
2012 films American documentary films Films about chess Chess in the United States Documentary films about children Documentary films about New York City 2012 documentary films Documentary films about education in the United States Films set in Brooklyn Kickstarter-funded documentaries 2012 in chess 2010s English-language films 2010s American films English-language documentary films {{bio-documentary-film-stub