River of Grass addresses the Florida Everglades’ past, present, and future through Marjory Stoneman Douglas’s groundbreaking book, The Everglades: River of Grass (1947) which transformed popular perception of the land from a worthless swamp into a valuable river. Marjory was a Miami-based journalist, suffragist, and advocate for the Everglades until her death at 108 years old. Over haunting Everglades landscapes and an otherworldly soundscape, Marjory’s observations of a shifting and developing South Florida contextualize present-day scenes in which a diverse cross-section of people navigate their relationship with a compromised place. Positioning past and present directly in conversation with one another, Florida native (and New College graduate) Sasha Wortzel has created a fierce yet loving capture of the Everglades’ complexity and beauty and reveals how historical events inextricably shape the present. Together the stories build a complex collective map of a unique and endangered place.
