“Schooling Elizabeth”
Work In Progress
Producer/Director/Cinematographer/Editor: Juliane Dressner
Editor/Additional Cinematography: Marilena Marchetti
When a group of Elizabeth, New Jersey, public high school students meet Giovana, a college student, she convinces them that by working together, they can try to change the things they don’t like about their schools. With metal detectors, invasive searches by security guards, too few counselors and more, they believe their schools are desperately in need of reform. Schooling Elizabeth shows how the effort to change their schools also changed them.
“906 Vapor”
Short documentary, 2024
“906 Vapor” is a short documentary about a vape shop owned by Marc Slis in Houghton, Michigan. The population of this quirky, remote Upper Peninsula community is just shy of 8,000. Its heyday as the world's largest supplier of copper has long since passed but its residents remain proud of their heritage and American identity. Slis, a trained geophysicist, smoked for 44 years and quit the first time he used a vape. He believes vaping saved his life and has been giving back ever since. So far, he’s helped over 1,400 smokers quit. Never afraid to advocate for the rights of vapers, Slis sued the Michigan governor to stop a flavor ban and won in 2019.
The shop functions as a non-judgemental, education, drop-in center for smokers from all walks of life. A pit bull sits in the shop window named “Bernie.” A sign above where she lays reads, “You can’t pet dogs when you are dead, quit smoking! I can help.” Bernie is a canine recruiter for Slis and is responsible for bringing countless new customers into the store.
Slis’ fight to keep his vape shop open amidst a political backlash is emblematic of the wholesale demise of the independent vape industry. The film is as much a time capsule as a celebration of the community-based individuals who ushered in a new era of smoking cessation and therapeutic nicotine use that would fundamentally change people’s chance at health and longevity forever.
“Swallow THIS: A Documentary about Methadone & Covid-19”
Short documentary, 2023
Methadone clinics became superspreader sites for the coronavirus because hundreds of people travel to them six days a week to get medicated. In March 2020, federal agencies made an unprecedented decision - every patient was eligible for 14-or 28-day take-home bottles of methadone. Louise Vincent, the Executive Director of the Urban Survivors Union summed it up,“It took a pandemic for us to get more take-homes.”
Swallow THIS is a call to action to abolish methadone clinics and for pharmacy pick up of the medication. Free screenings take place throughout the US until December 2023.
“Switch? A Documentary About Smoking and Schizophrenia”
Short documentary, 2023
At Villa Chiara and Casa Famiglia, two psychiatric residential programs in Sicily, residents try to switch from smoking traditional cigarettes to vaping.
“ICU, I See You”
Short documentary, 2022
Autumn is a critical care nurse in San Diego. Never, in her 9 years in the intensive care unit (ICU), has she experienced the degree of death and trauma brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic. A year into the pandemic, Autumn reveals that the heavy emotional toll has her at a breaking point. She voices the psychic pain felt by frontline staff who doggedly fight to keep their patients alive once the worst case scenario is imminent. The systemic failure to adequately prepare for the crisis leads her to question the priorities of the healthcare industry and her own role within it.
Liquid Handcuffs: A Documentary To Free Methadone
Feature-length documentary, 2019
Grant-funded by Open Society Foundations
FILMED IN 6 COUNTRIES
Afghanistan, Britain, India, Portugal, Russia, United States
In 2020, the overdose crisis killed over 81,000 people in the US. Methadone is the most successful treatment for opioid addiction and is proven to cut the death rate by half or more. So why is it easier to get heroin than methadone?
Liquid Handcuffs: A Documentary to Free Methadone, shines a spotlight on the closed world of methadone clinics. An international cast of methadone users, activists, and healthcare providers explain the benefits and the barriers to getting the medication. And drug policy expert Deborah Small provides commentary on the politics of methadone.
Liquid Handcuffs: A Documentary to Free Methadone explores the intersection of methadone with race, class, social control, and stigma. This is the first feature-length documentary that uses the lens of harm reduction to examine the methadone clinic system.
