SMS Faculty Neyda Martinez interviewed by WBAI’s “Untitled” about film Decade of Fire
On November 26, SMS Faculty Neyda Martinez (producer, Decade of Fire) was a guest on WBAI’s radio program “Untitled,” hosted by Malika Lee Whitney with TNS alum Vivian Vazquez-Irizarry, co-director of Decade of Fire and Rosalba Rolon founding director of Pregones/PRTT theater and lead creative writer/director of TORCHED! Hear the interview here (around 28 minutes).
Additionally, Neyda is a community advisor and collaborator of the new musical TORCHED! A People Ignited, the latest production from Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater (Pregones/PRTT) making its debut run from December 2-19, 2021. The musical lifts stories of survival to lay bare the infamies of the arson-for-profit enterprise which devastated the South Bronx community in the ’70s.
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About Decade of Fire
Throughout the 1970’s, fires consumed the South Bronx. Black and Puerto Rican residents were blamed for the devastation even as they battled daily to save their neighborhoods. In DECADE OF FIRE, Bronx-born Vivian Vázquez Irizarry pursues the truth surrounding the fires – uncovering policies of racism and neglect that still shape our cities, and offering hope to communities on the brink today. Through a rich seam of archival and home movie footage, DECADE OF FIRE confronts the racially-charged stereotypes that dehumanized residents of the South Bronx in the 1970’s, and rationalized their abandonment by city, state and federal governments. Vázquez Irizarry, in her role as the film’s central character and co-director seeks not only healing for her community, but to redeem them from the harmful mythology spread by the media that has continued largely unchallenged to this day.