Please join us at 7pm on Tuesday, August 1, 2017, in the Ascension Parish Hall, 12 West 11th Street, for a screening and discussion of Stand Clear of the Closing Doors (2013 – 102 minutes). Filmmaker Sam Fleischner will be on hand to guide our post-film discussion.
The film is the story of Ricky, a 13-year-old boy with autism, and his mother, Mariana, an undocumented immigrant. They live in Rockaway Beach, Queens along with Ricky’s rebellious older sister, Carla, and semi-absent father. Carla doesn’t pick Ricky up from school one day and as he walks home alone, he is swooned by a mysterious dragon figure into the subway. This marks the beginning of the young boy’s odyssey of self-discovery, where his confrontation with the bizarre, indifferent world of the subway pushes him to interact with the world. With an eye-opening view of life on the autism spectrum, the film simultaneously explores the strains of the immigrant experience. The New York Times calls it “a small miracle of a film, captures the grass-roots swirl of New York City with an extraordinary sensory attuning to urban life.”
Sponsored by Ascension Outreach Inc. and Resistance Cinema, the screening is free. Donations are gratefully received.
