Monday November 30, 7:30pm ET – Thursday December 3, 10:30pm PT
Mary Sue Connolly: Overdosed
Online screening
Q&A with the artist via live chat at 9pm ET
Program remains viewable for 72 hours
Microscope is very pleased to present “Overdosed,” a 75-minute documentary film by Brooklyn-based, Irish filmmaker Mary Sue Connolly.
Connolly’s first feature-length work is an investigation into the opioid epidemic and an indictment of the pharmaceutical industry told through personal discussions with key figures in the small town of Petersburg West Virginia, including among others a prescribing physician and a former teenage drug dealer, both of whom spent years in prison just prior to the shooting of the film. (West Virginia is the state with the highest rate of opioid prescriptions and opioid deaths in the US.) The program is viewable from Monday November 30th at 7:30PM ET until Thursday December 3rd at 10:30pm PT.
A sense of urgency and immediacy permeates “Overdosed,” which was shot between 2017 and 2019 and released just months later, reflecting the filmmaker’s hyperawareness that many people’s lives were and still are at stake. It was following the death of a family member through an accidental overdose that Connolly quit her job in television and set out for West Virginia accompanied by her young daughter, unsure of what she would find but feeling hat she “had to do something.” In the end, Connolly’s work discovers an intentional plan by big pharmaceutical manufactures and distributors to target susceptible impoverished communities and causing, in addition to overdoses and deaths, a cycle of under-education, unemployment, and imprisonment.
Coincidentally, this week Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin, admitted to criminal charges that include their paying kickbacks and other incentives to doctors to prescribe the painkiller. And, the big three pharmaceutical distribution companies, including McKesson, which has a plant in Petersburg and is featured in the film, are still in the courts facing lawsuits from more than 3,000 cities, counties and states across the US for their role in flooding the market with opioid pills. Unfortunately, the situation has not subsided, with the state of West Virginia alone recording 700 more suspected opioid overdoses in May and June of this year than in the same period last year.
Mary Sue Connolly will be available for a Q&A with the audience via live chat at 9pm ET on November 30th.
TO WATCH:
A “WATCH NOW” link will appear on this page on Monday November 30th at 7pm ET. Passes for viewing give full access to the video program and live chat.
General admission $8 (Valid through Thursday December 3, 10:30pm ET)
Member admission $6 (Valid through Thursday December 3, 10:30pm ET)
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Mary Sue Connolly is an Irish-born filmmaker and video editor who worked as an Editor/Producer for CNN’s New York bureau and as an Editor at CBS Television Distribution. During her time at CBS, Mary Sue edited numerous award-winning investigative reports, including the Exceptional Merit in Media Awards, the National Headliner Award, the Clarion Award and the National Press Club Award. She lives with her young daughter Meibhim and the family divides its time between Brooklyn, New York and County Waterford Ireland.
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Microscope Gallery Event Series 2020 is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC).