NY Premiere
Best Feature Documentary Jury Award, BlackStar Film Festival 2023
Please note, in light of NYC's latest COVID surge, and to ensure that everyone, including those who are immunocompromised, can safely join us, we ask that all attendees wear masks at all of our Fire Through Dry Grass screenings, unless you cannot wear a mask for accessibility reasons. If you are feeling sick or have been exposed to someone who has tested positive for COVID, please consider staying home and joining a virtual screening at a later date.
All Fire Through Dry Grass screenings will be Open Captioned. ASL will be available for post-screening Q&As upon request. Please email rmcdonnellhorita@gmail.com to request an interpreter or have any additional accessibility related questions no later than 9/27/2023.
There is one wheelchair accessible restroom that is gender neutral. DCTV has four AD devices available on a first come first serve basis. The theater has no steps and has seats removed to accommodate more wheelchairs/mobility devices. There is a lift up to the adjoining event space within the venue.
Fire Through Dry Grass uncovers in real-time the devastation experienced by residents of a NYC 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, the 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.
Q&A Details
Fri Sep 29, 7pm: Poetry, Art, and Animation
Q&A with with directors Andres “Jay” Molina and Alexis Neophytides and concept artist/animator Guillermo Mena moderated by DCTV's Dara Messinger
Sat Sep 30, 7pm: Collaborative Filmmaking
Q&A with directors Andres “Jay” Molina and Alexis Neophytides, Reality Poet/co-producer Peter Yearwood and Reality Poet/OPEN DOORS director/musician Vincent Pierce, and Reality Poets LeVar Lawrence and Alhassan “El” Abdulfattaah moderated by Rosemary McDonnell-Horita
Sun Oct 1, 1pm: Nursing Home Lives Matter, Community Organizing, and Building Power
Q&A with OPEN DOORS director, Nursing Home Lives Matter founder/Reality Poet Vincent Pierce, co-producer/Reality Poet Peter Yearwood, Coler staff and former OPEN DOORS director/FIRE producer Jennilie Brewster, moderated by Rosemary McDonnell-Horita
Mon Oct 2, 3pm: Long-Term Care Reform
Q&A with George Bowman, Coler Head Nurse and RN, Stephanie Patton, Director, Division of Nursing Home and ICF/IID Surveillance, Office of Aging & Long Term Care, Beth Finkel, State Director, AARP NY, moderated by Richard Mollot, Executive Director of the Long Term Care Community Coalition
Wed Oct 4, 4pm: Gun Violence Prevention
Q&A with Reality Poets and gun violence survivors Vincent Pierce, LeVar Lawrence, and Alhassan “El” Abdulfattaah, moderated by TBD