Great independent films. Great conversations with the filmmakers.
RIVER OF GRASS
Beacon Film Society presents…
RIVER OF GRASS
Thursday March 19, 2026
7:30p (7p doors)
Howland Cultural Center
477 Main Street Beacon NY 12508
Q&A with film director Sasha Wortzel to follow the screening.
RIVER OF GRASS is a present-day reimagining of environmentalist Marjory Stoneman Douglas’s celebrated book, “The Everglades: River of Grass,” (1947), which forever changed 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, catalyzing a prismatic journey across the Everglades with Miccosukee educator and activist Betty Osceola. 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, personal narration, present-day verité, and archival footage,
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.
“Winking and wondrous… bewitching”
-Robert Daniels / RogerEbert.com
“A vivid love letter to the land and a call for its protection”
-Pat Mulen / POV Magazine
Sasha Wortzel (Director, Producer, Editor) 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. Wortzel is a recipient of a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship in Film-Video. Her films have screened world-wide at venues including MoMA DocFortnight, CPH:DOX, True/False, San Francisco International, Hot Docs, Dokufest, Wexner Center for the Arts, and Smithsonian American Art Museum. Her expanded cinematic work has been exhibited at the New Museum, The International Center for Photography, and The Kitchen, among others. Wortzel is a 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.
STARRING JERRY AS HIMSELF
Beacon Film Society presents…
STARRING JERRY AS HIMSELF
Thursday April 9, 2026
7:30p (7p doors)
Howland Cultural Center
477 Main Street Beacon NY 12508
Q&A with producer Jonathan Hsu to follow the screening.
A genre-bending hybrid documentary/narrative about Jerry Hsu, a retired Taiwanese immigrant in Florida scammed out of his life savings.
After an unsettling call from a Chinese police officer puts Jerry on his heels, he agrees join an undercover operation that sends him into a spiral of secrecy and self-destruction.
What follows is a rare film that exists along the fine line between fact and fiction, one that confronts memory, nostalgia, human frailty and fallibility, the pursuit of the ‘America dream’, and the seductive traps that fraudsters set to prey upon our aging population.
*****
~ GRAND JURY AWARD ~
Slamdance Film Festival
*****
“ Starring Jerry as Himself can be filed under ‘truth is stranger than fiction.’ ”
– RogerEbert.com
“… participatory nature offers something new for true crime”
-POV Magazine
“… a remarkable accomplishment”
– Cinema Escapist
“100% Fresh”
– Rotten Tomatoes
Jonathan Hsu has been making films ever since his father gave him the family’s Digi8 Camcorder to document their family travels. Since then he has produced multiple award winning commercials, music videos, and films. He founded his commercial production services company HsuBox Productions Inc. with the mission to share and produce content that is as diverse as his crew and clients.
Jonathan is an alumni of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. He recently Executive Produced the horror movie “A Wounded Fawn” for Tribeca 2022’s Midnight Program and also the short film “Closing Dynasty” for the inaugural Netflix x Gold House x Tribeca 2022 Future Gold Fellowship. He is a member of the DPA, A-Doc, IDA, Gotham, and Film Independent.
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