FIRESTORM
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Firestorm Trailer
Images
Photo by Ed Kashi. LAFD paramedics struggle to transport 500 patients everyday to a shrinking number of hospitals.
Website
http://www.talkingeyesmedia.org/firestorm.php
Topics
Economy: Debt, Finance
Health: Disease/treatment, Narcotics, Nutrition/Malnutrition
Human Development: Aid, Children, Emergency Relief, Poverty, Social Exclusion, Urban, Youth
Human Rights: Civil Rights, Race Politics, Social Exclusion
Project Geography
US: California
Identity Niches
African American, Caucasian, Children, Latino, Senior/Aging
Budget
Raised to date: $175,000.00
Estimate to complete: $156,300.00
Total Estimated Budget: $331,300.00
The budget numbers above are accurate as of 05/19/2009
Status
Post Production
Media Type
Video
Project End Use
TV
Key Personnel
Julie Winokur
Director
Julie Winokur is an award-winning writer and filmmaker whose work tackles difficult social issues. Winokur’s first documentary, Aging in America was nominated for a Northern-California Emmy. Other film credits include The Sandwich Generation, Collateral Damage: Bad Medicine in Tennessee, Curse of the Black Gold: 50 Yearsof Oil in the Niger Delta and India’s Fast Lane to the Future, which won Best Online Video Series-2009 from the Magazine Publishers of America. Winokur’s work has appeared on PBS, National Geographic’s website, Discovery.com, MSNBC.com, and in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post and many other publications.
Stela Georgieva
Editor
Stela Georgieva began her career in the entertainment business editing variety television shows, cartoons, films and advertisements in her native Bulgaria. After she moved to the United States, she worked closely as an editor with the rising director Morgan Spurlock for several years and collaborated with him on their first feature documentary, the Academy Award-nominated "Super Size Me." Since then, her film editing credits include Konstantin Bojanov's"Invisible," a documentary following the struggles of a group of drug-addicted youth in post-communistic Bulgaria, and Rob Van Alkemade's "What Would Jesus Buy?” - an examination of the commercialization of Christmas in America. She recently produced Darryl Roberts' "America the Beautiful," a film about the unhealthy obsession with beauty that also went on to win several awards within the festival circuit, including Best Director at the Chicago International Film Festival.
Outreach/Engagement Plan(s)
Talking Eyes Media has a solid track record of successfully promoting and disseminating our work to grassroots organizations that use our films, exhibitions, books and multimedia programs to illustrate and humanize the issues on which they are working. We actively engage academia, social science, research and educational organizations to incorporate our work into curricula and directly into the classroom. Our films are widely used by universities and government agencies, and we always develop tool kit materials and comprehensive information on our website.
Our outreach strategy will focus on innovative ways to bring both the film, and the important issues it raises, into the community through national, regional and local organizations in a wide variety of venues – connecting with audiences typically not reachable through conventional broadcast media. Utilizing media in innovative ways we will launch the release of the film at fire museums around the country. We would also like to outfit an ambulance with a monitor and video equipment and create a mobile FIRESTORM theater which can be deployed as requested and provide a roving FIRESTORM screening experience. Such impromptu screenings can be organized in conjunction with regional health care and EMS onferences, at EMS training sites, medical conferences and community-based screenings.
A comprehensive website will be created to host a trailer of the film, announce screenings and track health care reform legislation. The website can also contain or link to information on how to find a clinic and support services, and articles on managing chronic illnesses such as diabetes, heart disease, obesity, high cholesterol and HIV/Aids. The FIRESTORM website will provide a community forum where information can be exchanged about related health issues.
Our goal is to produce a film that will be a powerful tool for policy makers and health care providers who educate underserved communities about managing medical care,avoiding the mis-use of 911 and finding a home for basic medical care. Talking Eyes Media will, in cooperation with partner organizations, conduct both quantitative and qualitative evaluations of the FIRESTORM outreach campaign.
Funders
| Name | Amount | Date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Fledgling Fund | $30,000.00 | 02/01/2008 | |
| Maurice Falk Foundation | $15,000.00 | 03/01/2007 | |
| Nathan Cummings Foundation | $100,000.00 | 01/01/2006 | |
| Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation | $10,000.00 | 01/01/2006 | |
| Maurice Falk Foundation | $15,000.00 | 01/01/2005 | |
| Ben & Jerry's Foundation | $5,000.00 | 01/01/2005 |
Location
110 Montclair Avenue
Montclair, 07042
Short Synopsis
FIRESTORM is a one-hour documentary that reveals the shocking reality of The Los Angeles Fire Department's Station 65—where paramedics run themselves ragged as 911 has become the speed dial for a crumbling health care system. Instead of fighting fires, the LAFD delivers more than 500 patients every day to ERs that are closing their doors at an alarming rate. Sometimes, the consequences can be deadly.
Description/Treatment
Every minute in the United States, an ambulance gets turned away from an emergency room because hospitals are simply too full. In Los Angeles, where the wait time in some ERs is as long as 48 hours, the entire 911 system is being challenged in ways that are alarming.
FIRESTORM is a one-hour documentary film that follows Los Angeles Fire Department Station 65, located in South LA, a neighborhood with a largely uninsured and undereducated population. The LAFD handles all emergency medical services for the city of Los Angeles, and currently 82% of the department’s work is medical, rather than fire-related. Eleven hospitals have closed in just five years in LA, and the challenge of delivering more than 500 patients per day to a shrinking number of hospitals is overwhelming to the LAFD. With resources strained, and 911 being used for everything from heart attacks to stomach aches, LAFD paramedics have become virtual ‘doctors in a box’ according to Fire Chief Daniel McCarthy.
When the film begins, Martin Luther King Jr. Hospital is on the verge of collapse, and by all measures delivering substandard care. It is known locally by the nickname ‘Killer King.’ By the end of the film, the confluence of hospital overcrowding and a fire department stretched to its limits has deadly consequences at Martin Luther King Jr. Hospital.
Shot cinema vérité with candid interviews and punctuated with stunning still images by Ed Kashi, FIRESTORM depicts the insanity behind a rapidly unraveling health care safety net. We witness LAFD paramedics standing in hospital hallways waiting for beds to free up. We see them driving ever longer distances in search of hospitals that are still accepting patients, and running themselves ragged answering non-urgent calls that could easily be addressed by primary care doctors.
Award-winning filmmaker Julie Winokur and world-renowned photojournalist Ed Kashi show how 911 has become the speed dial for those who either don’t have access to health care or don’t manage their care properly. Instead of putting out fires and responding to life-and-death emergencies, EMS personnel are essentially filling a void in medical care and stretching themselves to the brink.
While FIRESTORM clearly lays bare the problems plaguing the health care system, the film also shows efforts by administrators and policy experts to reverse the negative trends. The documentary makes a compelling case for the need for additional primary care doctors in under-served communities. It shows programs being developed to transform the ER system so it identifies people in hospitals who can be redirected to community-based clinics and local health centers. The film also makes the case for personal responsibility in maintaining our own health and the need for everyone to share the financial burden.
Chief McCarthy states: “We deal with disasters all the time. Whether it’s brush fires or earthquakes, but a flu pandemic would just about drive us to our knees in this city.”
FIRESTORM asks: Who will rescue the rescuers?
Click here to ask for more information about this project: