Synopsis: Guided by an unconventional teacher, high schoolers in upstate New York spend more than a decade making a student film and expose the toxic dumping poisoning their town’s water. Thirty years later, they sit with the footage.
Stars: Fred Isseks, Rachel Raimist, Jeff Dutemple, David Birmingham, Mike Regan
Director: Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss
Rated: NR
Running Length: 110 minutes
Movie Review in Brief: A documentary about teenagers who ran a television station out of their high school and asked questions professional journalists wouldn’t. Watching elected officials squirm is deeply satisfying, and what the kids found still holds up thirty years on. 
Teenage Wasteland Review: They Should Have Kept the Old Title
There’s something wonderfully strange about watching a group of teenagers investigate a toxic-waste scandal with nothing more than a few video cameras and a teacher who refuses to tell them what they can’t do. Decades before everyone carried a camera in their pocket, students at Middletown High School in upstate New York documented their community, questioned its leaders, and uncovered a story many adults would have preferred to leave alone.
Teenage Wasteland, which played the festival circuit under the much more appropriate title Middletown, is far more than a documentary about toxic dumping. It’s about what happens when a teacher gives young people the tools and freedom to take their community seriously. The result is an unexpectedly entertaining story of teenage curiosity, investigative journalism and civic responsibility.
Teenage Wasteland Puts a Camera in the Right Hands
In 1991, unconventional English teacher Fred Isseks, started Electronic English, an elective that encouraged students to learn by doing. What began with music videos, news bulletins and goofy skits eventually turned into a years-long investigation into illegal dumping at local landfills and the people who allowed it to happen.
The students weren’t just making a school project. They went to landfill sites, attended town meetings, interviewed experts, filed Freedom of Information requests and confronted politicians and other adults with uncomfortable questions. They eventually produced an hour-long documentary called Garbage, Gangsters, and Greed, drawing attention from outlets including 60 Minutes, ABC News, The New York Times and The Village Voice.
The most entertaining moments come when these teenagers sit across from adults who clearly expect to control the conversation, only to discover that their young interviewers aren’t interested in following a script. Watching elected officials squirm under that kind of scrutiny is remarkably satisfying.
Fred Isseks Didn't Teach Journalism. He Let Them Practice It.
Isseks is the film’s secret weapon, although he’d probably argue that the students did the real work. His philosophy was simple: learn by doing. He gave teenagers a place where they could experiment, ask questions and figure out who they were without the usual pressures of high school.
That freedom clearly mattered. Rachel Raimist went on to become a television director and professor. Jeff Dutemple became an Emmy-nominated cinematographer. David Birmingham stayed in Middletown and built a career helping people as a therapist. Mike Regan still lives in the area and runs a custom metal fabrication business.
Their paths are different, but they all describe Electronic English as something that changed how they saw themselves and the world around them. That’s where Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss find the film’s emotional weight.
The directors, who previously explored youthful idealism in Boys State and Girls State, aren’t simply interested in looking back at some amusing footage from the 1990s. They’re interested in what those teenagers became and whether the lessons they learned still mean something decades later.
Four Hundred Hours of the Past
The archival footage is phenomenal. Isseks preserved more than 400 hours of original material from the investigation, along with records and other documentation. McBaine and Moss had an enormous amount to sort through, and editor Christopher Passig turns that material into something that rarely feels like homework.
The footage captures everything from teenage goofing around to surprisingly serious investigative work. That contrast makes the students feel like actual teenagers rather than historical figures who have been polished for a documentary. They’re learning, flirting, joking around and occasionally looking completely out of their depth before suddenly asking an adult a question that stops the room cold.
In one glorious moment that no prize-winning screenwriter could dream up, Raimist decimates a council meeting by stepping up with a spontaneous comment. Watching the older Raimist smile as she watches her younger self act with such authority is one of those magical cinematic moments audiences rarely get.
The filmmakers also reconstruct the original Electronic English studio from a drawing Isseks made of the classroom, filling it with working 1990s television equipment. I’m usually wary of dramatic recreations in documentaries, but these scenes fit beautifully. They don’t try to disguise themselves as archival footage. Instead, they give the former students a physical space where they can revisit the place that helped shape them.
Thorsten Thielow‘s cinematography also gives the present-day interviews a polished look without overpowering the archival material. The visual contrast between the crisp contemporary photography and those fuzzy, imperfect video recordings makes the passage of time impossible to ignore.
The Kids Grew Up. The Questions Didn't.
What makes Teenage Wasteland more than a nostalgic look at an unusual high school class is how little distance there is between the students’ concerns and the world they occupy today.
The investigation happened more than 30 years ago, yet the questions about environmental responsibility, institutional accountability and who gets heard when something goes wrong haven’t disappeared. The students couldn’t force every problem they uncovered to be fixed, either. The landfills were eventually capped, but the toxic waste remained underground, and the full health consequences of that contamination were never conclusively determined.
That’s an uncomfortable place for the film to leave us, particularly because the students’ work was so earnest. They believed that exposing the truth would lead to action. Sometimes it did. Sometimes it didn’t.
But they learned something along the way that may have been just as important. They learned that they didn’t have to wait for someone older or more powerful to give them permission to ask questions.
That’s why Teenage Wasteland works so well. It isn’t really a story about rebellious teenagers. It’s about what can happen when young people are trusted enough to become citizens.
And 30 years later, those kids still have something to say.
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