Director Sasha Wortzel joins us in person for a post-film discussion.
This screening is free to Amherst Cinema Members.
RIVER OF GRASS is a present-day reimagining of environmentalist Marjory Stoneman Douglas’s celebrated book, “The Everglades: River of Grass,” (1947), which transformed the public’s understanding of the area from worthless swamps to an essential source of freshwater, enabling the ecosystem to endure, just barely, today.
In the wake of a hurricane, Douglas visits filmmaker Sasha Wortzel in a dream and catalyzes a prismatic study of a wilderness that is home to a rich history and a site of resistance in the face of climate collapse. Wortzel reads Douglas's book and joins prayer walks through the Everglades with Miccosukee educator Betty Osceola, transporting the audience through the watershed past and present. We meet a mother taking on the polluting sugar industry; a Two-Spirit Miccosukee environmentalist and poet; a mother daughter team removing snakes wreaking havoc on the ecosystem; and a family who have fished in the Everglades for six generations.
Interweaving Douglas's writing, present-day verité, and archival glimpses, RIVER OF GRASS reveals how this country’s origin story haunts and inextricably shapes contemporary American life, while asking how we might weather coming storms better together.
Sasha Wortzel is an award-winning filmmaker and interdisciplinary artist. Raised in Southwest Florida and based in New York City, Wortzel specifically attends to sites and stories systematically erased or ignored from these regions’ histories.
Her films have screened at MoMA DocFortnight, CPH:DOX, True/False, DOC NYC, BAMcinemaFest, San Francisco International, New Orleans Film Festival, Wexner Center for the Arts, and Smithsonian American Art Museum. Her expanded cinematic work has recently been exhibited at the New Museum, The International Center for Photography, and The Kitchen. Wortzel is a recipient of a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship, 2023 MacDowell Fellowship, 2020 Oolite Arts Ellies Award, and 2017 NYFA Fellowship. RIVER OF GRASS is her first feature documentary. The film has received institutional support from Sundance, Ford Foundation, Field of Vision, Doc Society, Chicken & Egg Pictures, and Sandbox Films.
Her short films include HOW TO CARRY WATER (2023), an IDA Awards nominee for best short documentary and currently streaming on Criterion Channel; THIS IS AN ADDRESS (2020) distributed by Field of Vision; and HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MARSHA! (2018; co-director Tourmaline) which won special mention at Outfest. Her artwork is in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, Studio Museum of Harlem, Leslie Lohman Museum of Art, and Miami-Dade County Art in Public Places. She has been featured in The New York Times, Artforum, and Art in America.
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