By Adam Grybowski
The institutions of Snake Hill included a prison, almshouse, church, insane asylum and several infectious disease hospitals. It operated on 200 acres from 1870 to 1962, when it was torn down.
Memories of Snake Hill prompted Ms. Higgins to approach filmmaker Sandra Longo about making a documentary on the place. Though Snake Hill, where Ms. Higgins’ grandmother had been a volunteer, was essentially a small city, she found little information about it. “It became clear very quickly, if we were going to do a history, this (film) was going to be about 12 minutes long,” Ms. Longo says.
When the pair met Patrick Andriani, the direction of the documentary turned. Thousands of graves remained on the site, buried under landfill. One of them contained the remains of Mr. Andriani’s grandfather, Leonardo, which Mr. Andriani and his father, Gennaro, had been on a nearly 20-year quest to find.
The documentary “completely shifted when I met Patrick,” says Ms. Longo, who has directed two other documentaries and created an original sitcom, Wit’s End. “A lot of times (a documentary) never ends up being the one you started filming.”
Due to the Andrianis’ persistence, the Snake Hill burial grounds became the site of the largest disinterment/reinterment in U.S. history, according to Ms. Longo’s Snake Hill (2007), to be screened at the New Jersey Film Festival Feb. 27 through March 1. Ms. Longo and Ms. Higgins will appear at the Feb. 27 showing to discuss the movie and answer questions.
”It became a human story that grabbed me,” Ms. Longo says of discovering the Andrianis. “Here’s a great story, but it also raises bigger issues: Do we care how we treat our dead?”
During a highway interchange project in the early 2000s, the New Jersey Turnpike Authority unearthed human remains. Seeking permission to disinter the mass grave, they were legally obligated to contact the Andrianis, since they were a direct lineal descendent of a person buried there. “If Patrick didn’t write those letters, none of this would have happened,” Ms. Longo says. The NJTA would have “scooped up all the bodies and put them in a mass grave.”
Although the Andrianis were the only living descendents on record, Snake Hill had buried thousands of people. The site of their remains had become not much more than a dumping ground and impediment to construction.
”If you ended up being sent there, a lot of times you ended up being buried there,” Ms. Longo says. “The interesting thing to me about those deaths, you really could have been the richest person in the county and ended up in that pauper’s grave. A lot of people ended up in Snake Hill who you wouldn’t think would be in Snake Hill.”
For example, in the 19th century a woman suffering from postpartum depression may have been sent to an institution like those at Snake Hill, according to the documentary. Leonardo Andriani, who served in the Italian Navy during World War I and worked as a longshoreman in Hoboken, was sent to Snake Hill possibly after suffering a stroke. Alone, he died of a heart attack a few days later. His family, whom he wanted to bring to America, was still living in Italy. His register number was 6,408.
”It just intrigued me that this conflux of people came together at this spot,” says Ms. Longo, who is based near Red Bank. “The crazy, the sick, the criminals, everyone was housed in this spot, like a dumping ground almost. It was like a big mystery essentially.”
Most headstones had been removed, knocked over or buried. Searching for their grandfather’s marker, the Andriatis were forced to enter the Hudson County Burial Grounds through a broken chain-link fence and, when spotted by authorities, told to leave. County officials had told them previously that the site didn’t exist. In the film, Mr. Andriati relates how the NJTA, attempting to bypass his rights, removed the burial ledger page that listed his grandfather.
”It showed the callousness of bureaucratic operations,” Ms. Longo says. “There are thousands and thousands of people buried there, and very little regard was shown for the fact they existed. (The NJTA) ended up doing the right thing, but they did it because they were forced to do it.”
Most audiences respond to the film with a sense of outrage, says Ms. Longo, who counters that emotion with a question. “Do you know where your great grandparent is buried?”
”It raises some interesting questions worth delving into from a society perspective,” she says. “As society becomes more transient, people become more disconnected from where they grew up” and are less likely to know where their relatives are buried, much less visit them.
”The main underlying human theme is how we treat our dead and does it really matter,” Ms. Longo says.
Snake Hill, which won Best Feature Documentary and The Jersey Fresh awards at the Red Bank International Film Festival, is Ms. Longo’s second documentary. Her first, What’s So Funny? (2004), followed Jessica Fisher, a 300-pound aspiring actress and comic, after her post-gastric-bypass surgery. Her third documentary, The BlueBelles, about elderly female friendship, is in post-production. She formed Like-Minded Entertainment along with Ms. Higgins. She is also the president of Chrysalis Productions Inc., a nonprofit film production company that specializes in educational and inspirational films.
Before becoming a filmmaker, Ms. Longo worked in marketing. “I was buzzing along in my corporate world,” she says, until her husband, who worked for the same company, was transferred to Bermuda. Ms. Longo relinquished her job and eventually became a life coach. “I really enjoyed it, getting people to figure out what they wanted to with their lives,” she says. Only, once her clients decided on their ideal job, few went through with it. “Any list of excuses, I’ve heard them all,” she says.
Acting as a model for her clients, Ms. Longo shed her job to pursue her fantasy of becoming a filmmaker. “I didn’t know how to turn on a camera,” she says. “I didn’t know one person (in the industry).” Through her massage therapist Ms. Longo met her future camera person and editor. She chose a subject and began shooting. “Three months into it I knew this was going to be what I did forever,” she says.
Snake Hill will be screened at Rutgers University, Scott Hall 123, New Brunswick, Feb. 27-March 1, 7 p.m., $8-$10; director Sandra Long and producer Debbie Higgins will discuss the film and answer questions after the Feb. 27 screening; www.njfilmfest.com; www.likemindedent.com
Adam Grybowski blogs at Sprout: www.packetinsider.com/blog/sprou
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