Wearing snapback caps and Air Jordans, Andres “Jay” Molina and the other Reality Poets don’t look like typical nursing home residents. They used to travel around New York 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 Specialty Hospital and Chronic Care Nursing Home’s brick walls.

The Reality Poets—a group of mostly gun violence survivors—let their rhymes flow throughout the film, underscoring feelings that their home is now as dangerous as the streets they once ran. However, 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.

We are screening this film in connection with Penn State Sustainability’s Colloquium on the Environment Keynote, which will take place a week earlier on Wednesday, February 5, 2025. Using insights from his sociological research, Colloquium guest Eric Klinenberg will help us consider how we can move forward from recent historical challenges, including Covid, to find more productive and empathetic engagement as a society. He will explore the power of becoming engaged in broader social networks to improve people’s health, happiness, and sense of purpose.

(This film screening is a collaboration with POV, PBS’ award-winning nonfiction film series: https://www.pbs.org/pov/, and is also screening in partnership with WPSU. The film originally premiered on POV on October 30, 2023.)

Following the film, we will host a panel discussion featuring experts from Penn State.