Love in the Time of Fentanyl

5340 North Bristol Street,Tacoma WA 98407

18 January, 2023

Description

THE EVENTComplimentary film screening with compelling conversation to follow with special guests, Colin Askey - director of Love in the Time of Fentanyl, and local community members focusing efforts on this very real epidemic. THE FILMA humane, loving, and sorrowfully impassioned portrait of the people who staff the Overdose Prevention Society (OPS) in Vancouver’s addiction-riddled Downtown Eastside neighborhood. Following a quick preamble about the wave of overdose deaths sweeping the city and the establishment of OPS without any official approval, the film slides into an organic fly-on-the-wall style that seems to reflect Askey’s time spent in the neighborhood. He tracks several of the people who work at OPS, mostly former or current addicts. Their routine appears not dissimilar to many social workers’—a mix of humanitarian and janitorial duties—but with an extra layer of darkness courtesy of the looming specter of death. Though Askey has made a message film, it is strongest in portraying the people caught in the epidemic. The OPS workers are a gentle yet vivacious bunch, their mission-driven desire to help spiked with the antiauthority aesthetic and mentality that comes from many of them being outcasts themselves. Ronnie, a soft-spoken but authoritative leader with an Alan Moore beard and vibe of a man who has been through the wars but feels no need to burden others with his past, comes across as a bulwark against the site’s endemic chaos. While he and Trey, a punk-ish artist who manages his grief through graffiti memorials to the dead, appear surprisingly well-balanced, other staff are operating on more of a knife’s edge. One of the most affecting staff members is Dana, a chipper and sweet-natured spirit with an ongoing habit; in one of the film’s hardest-to-watch moments, he whistles the “Andy Griffith Show” theme while injecting himself in the neck, blood leaking down. THE SPEAKERS