IMAGE: Indie Rights Movies / Amazon)
INDIE RIGHTS MOVIES/Amazon. 2024. Documentary. 65 minutes.
Grade 3 out of 4
In the first few seconds of filmmaker Deborah Attoinese’s award-winning documentary Playing With Fire, even before the story of Fire Battalion Chief Abby Bolt begins, this shocking – yet somehow not surprising – statistic is provided, “63% of female firefighters in the U.S. Forest Service experience gender discrimination and sexual harassment.” At about minute 5, the word “rape” is used for the first time. While the subject of the film was fully understood, hearing the word itself, spoken by the person who was subject to that gender discrimination, sexual harassment, and eventually rape for nearly the entirety of her 20-plus year career, was nevertheless shocking – yet somehow not surprising.
For the honorable if not noble calling to the dangerous and necessary work of the National Forest Service, Abby Bolt, a twenty-year veteran of the United States Forest Service, was for years persistently harassed, threatened, and ultimately raped by a fellow firefighter for whom there was no accountability – none. Playing with Fire recounts not only the specific incident – the rape – that propelled Abby to finally call on the Fire Service to account for what happened to her but for the culture of the U.S. Fire Service that allows this behavior to run rampant and unchecked – still.
As the film’s central protagonist, we meet and come to know Abby’s personal story, from her life as a young cowgirl and champion rodeo wrangler, through her marriage and her children and her very supportive parents, her sisters and her best friend – a cop – who encouraged her to report this crime. The profundity of that, the reporting of the crime of rape, is captured starkly in a series of moments near the beginning of the documentary that is at least as gripping as the actual fires the film ventures into with Abby, a prospect that she feared much less than the prospect of reporting this crime and all that she knew would come with it. She was right to worry; as additional statistics in the film bear out, most women don’t report sexual assaults generally, and it nearly never happens in the United States Fire Service because reporting the crime always subjects the women to scrutiny, ridicule, and worse.
Abby reported the crime and immediately began to deal with these issues. She lost work, raises, promotions, and opportunities and was ostracized from the service she’d dedicated her life to. Still, she pressed on, doing what she defiantly names in the film, “calling bullshit,” by speaking truth-to-power and telling her story through the chain of command to her family and friends and in this documentary film.
While much of Playing with Fire is about Abby’s pursuit of justice through the apparatus of the Fire Service, the supporting material comes from the voices of others, mostly but not only female firefighters, echoing Abby’s specific attacks, both physical and psychological and the image of the Fire Service as a place – put mildly – unwelcoming to women capable and dedicated to fighting fires and saving communities. While a male voice in support of these accusations and this history is not necessary for validation, Assistant Fire Director Randy Skelton for the Southern California Fire District does provide one, literally, one.
As noted, the person who raped Chief Bolt suffered no consequences for his crime; for that matter, neither has the United States Fire Service, save this documentary which, in reporting this firefighters story, offers some measure of accountability now firmly in the public record in the shape of this well-made film and the bravery of its actually, heroic subject and those who stood with her in the heat of the Fire, both literal and figurative.
Playing with Fire will be streamed on Amazon, YouTube Movies, and Google Play. We recommend that it be shared widely so that the women of the fire service know that the public is watching.
CHARLES BURNETT PRESENTS – PLAYING WITH FIRE
Winner Best Cinematographer DTLA FF 2023
Winner Best Documentary-Audience Award Marina Del Rey FF 2024
Winner Impact Docs Awards of Merit 2023