Invisible People…. Homelessness in Brighton

Invisible People…. Homelessness in Brighton is the short film which I have made. A link to the film can be found under “links” on the right hand side (Invisible People… Homelessness on Brighton). Due to confidentiality reasons  the video has set to private, however if you wish to view it, do not hesitate to contact me ,and I will give you the password.(bn44@kent.ac.uk). 
The film is a short documentary which is primarily focussing on what life is like in Olympus House ( a council assisted hostel,  situated in Brighton). I wanted to depict truth, without drama, the film emphasizes contrast between two world which are one so to speak. Brighton is a modern forward thinking city, it is a very popular tourist destination and often considered quite “cool”. However, Brighton is also a city which is fueled by drug addiction, homelessness and uncertainty- not many people see this side of Brighton- but it is there despite being hidden, the problem of homelessness is not going away- its going to get worse. 

Olympus House seems to provide a stable environment for many homeless people. The hostel as the documentary suggests is different to many others in the city. Residents seem to feel they are lucky to be placed at Olympus House. What I suppose, I as the film maker wanted to achieve, is to highlight that homelessness in Brighton is a huge issue which of course does need to be addressed. We need to open our eyes to what is really going on in cities, Brighton is by no means alone in high drug use and addiction problems. The film is trying to demonstrate life, it is a short film depicting life for residents at Olympus House. I did not want glamorize either world, merely document it. 
Any feedback would of course be welcome.  

This Is Brighton

This is a fantastic video, created by Caleb Yule. Shot over 10 months, the film depicts Brighton beautifully. The film shows the kind of Brighton I grew up in, placing many visuals of places I used to go, my school, the beach, the park etc… However what this film does not show, is the Brighton that so many homeless people live in. For them Brighton is a place fie with drugs, lacking opportunity, unstable and harsh. The short video which I have created aims to highlight the contrast in these two worlds, so to speak. For many people living in Brighton, aren’t aware of hostels even existing right on their door-step….
However, the film Caleb Yule has created is so beautiful and very well executed.. I have gained great insight and inspiration from watching this short film, and I would definitely recommend you watch it as well.

RICO

This video is filmed and directed and edited by Jeremy Snell. I think this video is beautifully made. I think Snell demonstrates the fact that people on the streets are tough and will not give up easily so well. What I also found striking about this film is that like many homeless people, Rico would not wish his circumstance on anyone. Even more poignant  than that though, is  homeless people all seem to say that life is worth more than being the hardest, toughest guy. To me this is what really shines through, and i think that a lot of homeless people, like addicts, wish they could go back and change their lives, but at the same time they are some of the most strongest people- In the words of Rico- “It aint east bein on the streets”

Jeremy Snell’s film is definitely worth a watch:

 

 

Ahmedabad Winter Morning

This film to me depicts real life. it just goes to show people are resilient, and happiness can be found in the most desperate of situations. These people have literally nothing in terms of material possession, but what they lack in material they gain by their spirit and endurance. Homelessness is grim, but people find light, and survive.. it’s just quite inspirational to me.
below I’ve put the description, so check it out

This video was shot in December 2009 at IIM Road, Ahmedabad (India). It was cold day early in the morning. This video shows life of poor people who stays on road side, they are homeless. They earn INR 150 = $3, if husband and wife both works they will get double means INR 300 = $6. They spend each day about INR 100 = $2, for their living expenses, and $1 or $2 they save.

They get up early in the morning, have their tea and make some food and go for work and return at 8PM and make dinner. They are homeless, no insurance, but live very happily. They are alive!

New notes added:

Yes, they earn very less. I see them at same place, they are still there! Same life what they are in this film.

I still have not come across to some answer,s never wanted to put them in embarrassing moment by asking them. Just think they do not have home so forget about toilet, what is solution for that? They must go for it in open area and that too in dark time, so people can not see them. Just imagine if any of these male, female, old or children get in them self diarrhea then! Just imagine if it is heavy rain early in the morning then how they do their daily morning activities?

Huh!

Want to make second part of this short film in which I would like to take them in some places where they can never imagine to go in their dream!

This will take time, this require some money, maybe I could have sale this original RAW footage and can have some money and would have use for their entertainment. I do not know where we can try to sale and I am afraid who will buy?

Kaushik

More on my city Ahmedabad:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmedabad

Freedom Tunnel : Charles le Brigand

Charles le Brigand has created a really captivating film here. All the shots, despite looking like stills, are actually edited film, I love the photographic nature to his film. However what really enticed me was the music used. The music is for me what holds the film and essentially what it is that makes it brilliant. I am not for a second saying that the film on its own would be dull, far from it, but the music employed makes the film more of a journey carrying the viewer through, guiding ones eye in relation to the beat..
The description below I have pasted in, so the film is even more contextualised. However, actually I prefer to watch something without a description, simply because I want to see the film as objectively as possible, without any external influence or preconceptions..

Filmed and cut by Charles le Brigand
All shots are video, no stills.

Under Manhattan’s Upper West side, runs the “Freedom” Tunnel. Built in the 30’s by Robert Moses, the passage boasts legendary graffiti murals and piles of debris remaining of the past homeless city era. After using it for only a couple of years, Amtrak discontinued the line and left a massive cavern which later became a shelter for street people. Progressively, the tunnel turned into a veritable underground metropolis where thousands of homeless were living in organized communities underneath the city’s skin.

The tunnel also became a prime spot for graffiti artists. Chris Pape, aka Freedom, was one of the pioneers and his work inspired the name of the tunnel. “Freedom” painted immense murals utilizing the unique lighting provided by the ventilation ducts, turning the tunnel into an extraordinary underground art gallery. Some of his most notable paintings survived for decades and are still conspicuous today (“Venus de Milo”, the “Coca-Cola Mural”, Dali’s “Melting Clock”,a self-portrait featuring a male torso with a spray-can head, etc.).

In 1991, Amtrak decided to reopen the tunnel. The shanty towns were cleared out by the police and homeless were evicted. Although deserted, the tunnel is now an active train line and a stunning experience for urban explorers.

It is a bizarre blend of dark and light, silence and rumble, solitude and multitude. As you penetrate the tunnel and walk along the tracks, the sunbeams perforating the ceiling and highlighting the railway gives the place a post-nuclear feel. Voices from children playing above in Riverside Park sound like lost souls and trains whistling and roaring through the ruins of the shanty towns send chills down your spine.

This is one of the most uncommon and fascinating journeys I’ve ever taken.

Video and words by Charles le Brigand
For information please visit charleslebrigand.com/ or ldbk.eu/carlito
or email me here: charleslebrigand@gmail.com
All rights reserved. Une production de Brigand © 2010

Music: “Ascendance” by Zenzile
zenzile.com

More Images here:
flickr.com/photos/stephanemissier/sets/72157624396820178/

Big Picture: Homeless (Lee Jeffries)

In 2008 Lee Jeffries an ammeter photographer, and accountant by profession, began photographing homeless people. His photos are captivating, I was just browsing for interesting stuff for the blog, and quite literally  stumbled across Jeffries shots. I think I was drawn to Jeffries, because his portraits have an almost painting like look to them, they almost aren’t quite real. Very interesting portraits, leaves you wanting to know more about the individuals!

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Renewing Ethnographic Film.

This very insightful  article is by David MacDougall..

MacDougall brings both a refreshing and engaging approach to visual ethnography, actively encouraging new mediums  to enter the previously “tight”,  more traditional field of what is and is not anthropology. Both technology and anthropology have come along way, so why not combine the two to create something that is current, and brings life and colour  back into the field.

I’ve chosen to use music in my film..Traditionally music isn’t really used when making ethnographic film, but I personally feel that music makes people feel, and that it can only really add to a film. One can of course argue that music that is added for affect would actually take away from the ethnographic-ness of the film… But for me I believe music is so much apart of society, it is embedded in our culture, so why not allow something that has become inherently natural in out day to day lives in a film… I do however, understand the argument against music being used, and to a certain extent I cannot argue with it, but for the video  I’ve made I feel music is appropriate..

I would definitely recommend checking out the MacDougall article, in the link below.

Renewing Ethnographic Film. MacDougall.

 

 

 

This video depicts in so many ways the entrapment of addiction…
I mean more often than not people who are entrenched in drug or alcohol abuse want more than ever to not be dependent. However, it really isn’t easy, and I think what this film shows is that treatment can definitely work, but its the environment which many addicts live in, which they need to escape from if they really want to change.
In many ways I found this short film frustrating. This lady has kids and to me if one thing is an inspiration it should be your children… But on the other hand I think it is impossible to understand the hold drugs have on people..
Having worked at Olympus House, I often felt frustrated at the lack of progress or development.. but I think one just has to realise the scale to which these guys are working at… That is not meant to sound patronising, it is just that when working with people with addictions, sometimes progress comes in tiny tiny steps, but what I suppose I am saying is you need to recongnise those steps and be patient….
Anyway, this film is definitely worth checking out.

Link

LIFE Magazine- Peter Stackpole.

I’m truly fascinated by the photographers at LIfe Magazine. Although they are not anthropologists in any way, what all the photographers at LIFE created time after time were snap shots of, for want of a better word, life… In other words they time after time would depict both the ordinary and the extraordinary in ways which the viewer becomes totally enticed into the world of the photograph. I suppose I particularly like the work of Peter Stackpole, because he just captures truly intimate moments without being crude or intrusive. It is as if the camera is not there, which I just think makes the best photographs…..

I would very much like to be able to apply the same freeness the photographers at LIFE use with my film. The very  unobtrusive nature of the photos produced, would be something which I aim to create in my film. Obviously I will not be able to be totally free and “invisible” so to speak, purely because of the time constraint and the very nature of my film, however I will strive to maintain integrity to the guys I am filming. 

The extract below is taken from the Life Magazine website…

A native Californian who maintained a lifelong connection with the Bay Area — even as he traveled the globe for a quarter-century as a professional photographer — Peter Stackpole was born in San Francisco in 1913 to artist parents, and developed an interest in photography in grammar school. Early in his career he was affiliated with the influential ensemble of like-minded, San Francisco-based photographers known as Group f/64 (which included greats such as Edward Weston and Ansel Adams) and also photographed for the Oakland Tribune newspaper.

Stackpole was one of the “original four” — the celebrated quartet of staff photographers (along with Margaret Bourke-White, Alfred Eisenstaedt and Thomas McAvoy) on LIFE magazine’s masthead at its launch in November 1936.

During his 24-year career at LIFE, Stackpole covered stories as varied in scope and tone as the construction of great bridges, from the Delaware River to the Golden Gate; dance marathons; film directors and movie starlets; and the struggle in the Pacific during World War II. (He worked side by side with a younger but soon-to-be-legendary photographer, W. Eugene Smith, during the Battle of Saipan in the summer of 1944; Stackpole’s name appeared above Smith’s when their graphic, chilling pictures from Saipan were published together in LIFE during the war.)

Jokingly nicknamed “Life Goes to a Party Stackpole” by his colleagues, because he so frequently covered parties and the Hollywood set for the magazine, he spent more than 10 years in LIFE’s Los Angeles bureau reporting on the mystifying universe known as California.

In 1941, Stackpole was assigned to photograph the notoriously hard-partying Errol Flynn, which later came back to haunt him when he was called to the stand as a witness in a 1943 statutory rape case against the movie star. (A nightclub dancer named Peggy Satterlee claimed that, when she was 15 years old, Flynn attacked her on his boat around the time Stackpole was shooting his feature for LIFE; Flynn was acquitted of that charge, and of a similar charge involving another underage girl.)

A technical master known for his underwater photography, Stackpole also worked on numerous “behind the scenes” features for LIFE, as when he creatively documented the making of the 1954 Jules Verne epic, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. In 1953 he won one of the very earliest George Polk Awards in photojournalism for his eerie, final pictures of competitive free-diver Hope Root descending into the ocean depths off the coast of Florida while trying to set a world record in deep-water diving. Root vanished during the dive, and was never seen again.

After he left LIFE in 1960, Stackpole returned to the Bay Area and taught for years at the Academy of Arts College in San Francisco; he also wrote a column, “35mm Techniques,” for the popular magazine, U.S. Camera. In 1991, Stackpole’s Oakland, Calif., home burned down —  along with the negatives from much of his astonishing career.  But because he was for so long a staff photographer with LIFE, most of his archives were housed with Time Inc., and survived —  a trove of pictures, like those selected for this gallery, that serve as testament to one photojournalist’s magnificent body of work.

Liz Ronk is the Photo Editor for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LizabethRonk.

 

 

Related Topics: Hollywood, Life Magazine, Movies, Pacific Conflict, Peter Stackpole, World War II

Read more: http://life.time.com/photographers/photographer-spotlight-peter-stackpole/#ixzz1rufU9LJF

Screened from society

I think this article puts into context what I hope to portray in my short film. I suppose that really is the notion that homeless people are so often screened out of society, it’s as if they are almost feared…… the article written by Rachel Quigley demonstrates how reluctant people can be to help homeless people, It is worth reading. I was shocked to discover the impact to which peoples fears and preconceptions of something they dont even know.. I suppose that is the definition of fear, the unknown, but then I cannot see how that makes it acceptable…

Anyway this is the link

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2058572/Video-Chicago-teen-punches-homeless-man-Red-Line-subway-unprovoked-attack.html