FAMS Visiting Filmmakers Series: The Waiting Room and Peter Nicks
Wednesday, November 7, 2012 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM EST
Johnson Center, Cinema
Sponsored by the Film & Media Studies Program at George Mason University, the event is free and open to the public.
The Waiting Room is an immersive documentary that shows what happens at in the Emergency Room at Oakland's Highland Hospital. The filmmakers were granted unprecedented access to this "safety-net" facility, which is fighting for survival during a persistent economic downturn. Stretched to the breaking point, the Highland is the primary care facility for 250,000 people of nearly every nationality, race, and religion, with 250 patients -- most of them uninsured -- crowding into its ER every day. Through verite footage and interviews, the film offers a raw, inteimate, and often uplifting look at how patients, staff, and caregivers cope with disease, bureacracy, frustration, hope, and hard choices during a typically hectic day.
The documentary has won awards at the San Francisco International Film Festival and the Full Frame Documentary Festival. The GMU screening will be followed by a Q&A with filmmaker Peter Nicks (who attended Howard University as an undergraduate) and Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday. We look forward to a lively discussion of health care in the US, race, gender, and class politics, filmmaking, and the evolving stakes of documentary and journalism.
Co-sponsored by African and African American Studies, Communication, Cultural Studies, English, Film & Video Studies, the Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Multicultural Education, the School of Nursing, and University Life.
