From Independent Lens, the film Decade of Fire covers a shocking but untold piece of American urban history, when the South Bronx was on fire in the 1970s. Left unprotected by the city government, nearly a quarter-million people were displaced as their close-knit, multiethnic neighborhood burned to the ground, reducing the community to rubble.

Metrofocus spoke to Vivian Vázquez Irizarry, the film’s director and producer as well as a survivor of the Bronx fires, and the film’s co-director and producer Gretchen Hildebran.