Disability
& Health Equity
Join
us for a special screening of Fire Through Dry Grass, followed by a
talkback featuring Ebony Deloach, Cason Stark, Marly Saade, all representatives
from Able SC and disabled advocates, as well as one of the filmmakers. The
talkback will be moderated by Justice Shorter of SeededGround.
This
event is for those interested in topics of housing, violence prevention, arts,
health, and issues impacting our youth, seniors, and marginalized
communities.
Film:
Fire Through Dry Grass
Fire
Through Dry Grass uncovers in real-time the devastation experienced by
residents of a New York City nursing home during the coronavirus pandemic.
Co-Directors Alexis Neophytides and Andres “Jay” Molina take viewers inside
Coler, on Roosevelt Island, where Jay lives with his fellow Reality Poets, a
group of mostly gun violence survivors.
Wearing
snapback caps and Air Jordans, Jay and the other Reality Poets don’t look like
typical nursing home residents. They used to travel around the city sharing
their art and hard-earned wisdom with youth. Now, using GoPros clamped to their
wheelchairs, they document their harrowing experiences on “lock down.”
Covid-positive patients are moved into their bedrooms; nurses fashion PPE out of
garbage bags; refrigerated-trailer morgues hum outside residents’ windows. All
the while public officials deny the suffering and dying behind Coler’s brick
walls.
The
Reality Poets’ rhymes flow throughout the film, underscoring their feelings that
their home is now as dangerous as the streets they once ran and—as summer turns
to fall turns to winter—that they’re prisoners without a release date. But
instead of history repeating itself on this tiny island with a dark history of
institutional neglect and abandonment, Fire Through Dry Grass shows
these disabled Black and brown artists refusing to be abused, confined,
erased.
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