To Bury a River is the story of a landscape built to embody progress and of the people who continue to live, work, and imagine within what that vision left behind. Beneath Flushing Meadows–Corona Park lies the buried Flushing River, once one of New York’s major waterways. Above it stand the aging monuments of the 1964 World’s Fair, reminders of a future that never fully arrived. In the film, the river is animated and given a voice, becoming a speculative presence moving through past, present, and future.

Scattered throughout the park are the shards of past grandiose visions of progress and unsustainable models of development. Through observational footage, interviews, poetry, speculative fiction, and archival materials, the film brings together a collection of presences, along with their creativity and memories, allowing them to echo across the park’s vast and sometimes silent grounds. To Bury a River is ultimately an affective portrait of this land.