Andrew Reid
FILM: IRON LUNG
Andrew Reid is a disabled Jamaican-Cuban storyteller who migrated to the United States at the age of 10. He uses his multicultural Caribbean identity and the visual medium to create stories grounded in drama but not bound by genre.
He is the recipient of the African American DGA Student Award and is an MFA graduate from the USC School of Cinematic Arts. He was recently nominated at the NAACP Image Awards, HBOMax Latino Short Film Competition, and Best of NewFilmmakers LA. His award-winning projects have screened at over 80 film festivals worldwide.
Reid’s recent accolades include being selected for the SFFilm Rainin Filmmakers with Disabilities Grant, the Spinal Cord Injury Artist Innovator Fund, Inevitable Foundation Elevate Collective, and the Arts Council of Long Beach Creative Corps. Furthermore, he has been selected as a finalist for the NBCU Launch TV Directors Program and has previously participated in the Paramount ViewFinder Emerging TV Directors Program. He is currently engaged in the development of feature films, episodic content, and commercial projects, all of which have garnered support from several institutions including the Tribeca Film Institute, Film Independent, The Gotham, and the Sloan Foundation.
Reid was also selected as a directing fellow for Film Independent’s Project Involve and was a semi-finalist for the Student Academy Awards. He has directed several short films and has creative development experience at Artists Equity, Pearl Street Films, Paramount Pictures, and NBCUniversal. You can learn more at www.ReidtheStory.com.
DIRECTOR STATEMENT
Ubiquitous in the 40s and 50s during the polio epidemic—a disease which could paralyze the diaphragm—an iron lung is an air-tight, coffin-like respirator that encloses a person from the neck down. It helps them breathe by varying the pressure within the chamber. Iron lungs are now more likely to be seen in a museum than a hospital, but for the very few people who still rely on them to breathe, their repair and upkeep are a matter of daily survival.
I gravitated towards the story of IRON LUNG because it is an examination of the caretaker-patient dynamic that challenges our misconceptions of disability and what it means to live a full life. It is inspired by true events as there are many instances of iron lung users dying from power outages due to bad weather and lack of resources. It is important to me to represent the communities I present on screen as authentically as possible. For IRON LUNG, I reached out to the disabled community to find a working iron lung, and a quadriplegic who used to live in an iron lung provided us with her old one.
As a Caribbean filmmaker with a physical disability, I always seek to shed light on BIPOC and disabled communities in ways that audiences have yet to see. In this case, a contained survival thriller that explores the themes of sisterhood, disability, and perseverance.
