Everyone has a story to tell. Just as housing can be seen as a human right, so can we see the expression of self through narrative – it is essential in the promotion of one’s own mental health, self efficacy, autonomy, civic engagement and overall ability to derive pleasure from existence.
As with so many of the utilities and provisions required for lifting one’s self out of homelessness or into true financial independence, the tools of storytelling too are often restricted. In a world where just having a bag of a certain size can ban one from entering a library, what hope is there for the men and women who carry all they own in such burdensome bags to get their hands on a camera?
A new filmmaking workshop at Street Sense has answered the call. Filmmaking cooperative is actually a more appropriate term for the project. Unlike many forms of art, the participation of a crew is generally necessary for the production of a cinematic product. In the filmmaking co-op, each participant crews in a different capacity on all of the other participants’ films, enabling everyone to see his or her vision realized down the line.
What began as a theory back in January is an emerging success story in September. Not only have a class of seven Street Sense vendors (Angie Whitehurst, Morgan Jones, Robert Warren, Cynthia Mewborn, Levester Greene, Sasha Williams and Chon Gotti) come within weeks of wrapping their first production (a 30-minute documentary that involves a trip to New York) they are well into the filming of their second film and have begun the drafting process for their third and fourth films.
It’s hard to say which is the greater victory: seeing the cinematic visions of these talented men and women finally being realized after years of being confined to the insides of their heads, or knowing that members of the public who have never experienced homelessness will have the chance to view a set of works that could not have been created by filmmakers who have never been homeless.
What is critical to the Street Sense filmmaking co-op is that participants can tell any story they want. It might be the story of their homelessness, but it could also be a fantasy, a science fiction, a romantic comedy, a self-promotion piece, a work of performance art or a documentary exploration of some nonfictional topic. The participants are free to tell whatever story moves them. Herein lies the real meaning of the workshop: a person is not defined solely by his or her external reality.
We all have a choice about how we define ourselves, what we want to present to the world and what we desire to keep secret. That the truth that guides the filmmaking workshop.
We have launched a Kickstarter campaign and hope to raise $7,500 to help ensure our filmmakers can eat while they work on their art and are able to pay for costumes or permits when their scripts call for such things. You can find the campaign here.
