Genre
Synopsis
On August 18th, 2021, 24-year-old D’Anthony Dorsey, a marine biology teacher at Auburndale High School in Polk County, FL was admitted to Lakeland Regional Health Medical Center in Lakeland, FL, the same hospital in which he was born, with COVID-19. For over three weeks, D'Anthony was in and out of an induced coma. His mother Lydia visited the hospital every day and whispered in his ear that they were all waiting for him to wake up. But he never did. He was unvaccinated. Lydia had to bury her healthy, athletic son because Florida's government officials had convinced residents that masks were not preventing the spread of the virus. D’Anthony’s family is still divided on the safety of the vaccine.
On December 20, 2021, Randy Watt texted his daughter Jessica from an emergency room to let her know that he had tested positive for COVID-19. He too was unvaccinated. For 12 days, Randy fought for every breath while lying alone in his ICU bed in Akron, OH. Jessica and her daughter Jillian, Randy’s granddaughter, were watching Randy die on their phones, unable to comfort him when his doctors and nurses reminded him that his dire situation was preventable. Family members found out after his death that he was actively posting on a social media feed frequented by powerful, anti-vaccine influencers with political agendas and financial greed, preying on those who had been led astray by unverified information and falsehoods about the pandemic, many claiming that it is a hoax.
And now, all three women are mourning in silence for fear of being told that Randy and D’Anthony’s deaths are insignificant. The disenfranchised grief they are experiencing is becoming a mental health crisis in itself.
Bio
Director and cinematographer Meg Daniels has been telling people's stories for over 25 years. As a native of Upstate New York, she discovered photography at a young age. Over the course of her career, she became a photo essayist and filmmaker, knowing that it was her responsibility to use her storytelling skills as a platform for raising awareness about social justice issues both well-known and shrouded by secrecy. Proper Pronouns, her first feature film, has screened in several 2020 film festivals including The New Orleans Film Festival and Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival. The film was broadcasted on PBS-NC in November 2020 and was recently selected to be a part of the 2022 Southern Circuit Film Tour.
Currently, Meg is working on a project titled I’m Still Here, Love. This short documentary follows the devastating aftermath that three women experienced after the tragic deaths of their loved ones to COVID-19 indirectly caused by the systemic failure of state and federal governments, religious institutions, scientific experts, and social media platforms that allowed substantial amounts of disinformation to flood news feeds and airwaves.
Meg graduated with her MFA in documentary filmmaking from WFU on May 18, 2019 and will begin her teaching career as an adjunct professor in the Communications Department at Elon University in August 2022.
