Fire Through Dry Grass Documentary About Experiences Of Roosevelt Island Coler Nursing Home Residents And Workers During Covid Pandemic National Broadcast Premier 10 PM Monday October 30 On PBS Television Series POV

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 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.

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. It’s a powerful reminder of how defining and devastating the pandemic was, and gives space to those whose voices were long ignored....

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by POV on PBS (@povdocs)

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.