Fire Through Dry Grass is a documentary film about the experience of residents and workers at the NYC Health & Hospitals Corp Coler nursing facility on Roosevelt Island during the Covid pandemic.
Coler residents and Open Doors Reality Poets teamed with documentary filmmaker Alexis Neophytides
to show what it was like
at the Coler nursing home during the early days of the Coronavirus
pandemic.
Fire Through Dry Grass makes its national broadcast premier 10 PM Monday October 30 on the award winning PBS television series POV. The film can also be viewed online at this link.
According to the Fire Through Dry Grass website:
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 dont
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 Colers 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
andas summer turns to fall turns to winterthat theyre 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.
The NY Times review of Fire Through Dry Grass reports:
… The combination of firsthand footage with poetry makes for an intimate and raw film that gives a real sense of the confinement faced by the residents, some of whom compared the experience to previous jail stints. Its a powerful reminder of how defining and devastating the pandemic was, and gives space to those whose voices were long ignored….
Here’s the trailer from Fire Through Dry Grass.
Do you remember what it was like?
Fire Through Dry Grass can be seen 10 PM tomorrow, October 30, on the PBS television series POV or at this online link.
