A Few Thoughts On Homelessness

Edward Givens taking Dominic to one his spots that he used to sleep in for the 21 years he was homeless. Edward Givens, originally from New York, came to Los Angeles in the 90’s because he figured it was better to be homeless in good weather. Edward… — Edward Givens taking Dominic to one his spots that he used to sleep in for the 21 years he was homeless. Edward Givens, originally from New York, came to Los Angeles in the 90’s because he figured it was better to be homeless in good weather. Edward worked at an auto-body shop for 18 of those 21 years earning about $100 per day but spent all his money on on crack cocaine. Through concentrated efforts of various organizations, including the Skid Row Housing Trust, Edward not only got homed but also clean. He recently celebrated 10 years of sobriety and 11 years of getting off the street.

As a native Angeleno, I have seen homelessness wax and wane over the years, but I’ve never seen anything like what is happening right now. It is undeniable that we are in crisis. Estimates report that in Los Angeles alone there are approximately 60,000 homeless individuals sleeping on the street each night.

A few years ago Dominic and I thought we would like to approach this issue from a film perspective but never pulled the trigger on a project. This fall we are working with Skid Row Housing Trust to field some stories of formerly homeless individuals and what being granted permanent supportive housing has meant to them. Along the way, I have started to pay more attention to the public discussion surrounding the issue and our desire (or lack thereof) to truly understand it. I have gathered a few thoughts of my own and will share them here.

Homelessness is one of the most perverse things about American capitalism and everybody knows it. As the alternatives to capitalism don’t seem to work out any better, we have come to quietly accept it as a feature of our system and assume it won’t come for us. Unlike poverty, which is mostly perceived as structural, homelessness is often chalked up to poor personal choices justified by spurious beliefs that homeless people are such because they are “lazy” or “weak”, quickly distinguishing ourselves as having earned our status in some way. This feeling of superiority is often subtle, under-the-skin of the average passerby who averts his gaze from the homeless individual or, on a good day, drops a few bucks in a Starbucks cup.

The chief way this quiet supremacy maintains it’s stranglehold is through the public’s ability to ignore and unsee the homeless. When one is deeply confronted with the humanness of the person they have assumed to be dispensable it becomes almost impossible not to think about the larger questions such as “could this be me”?

Yes, it’s true that housing development regulations in states like California result in inadequate new housing supply. Additionally, it’s true that poor wages are a problem. But something deeper is afoot. An insidious message society sends that one’s “value” is measured by their productivity in the marketplace. Or perhaps, as we pass into late capitalism, that one’s value is measured by their consumption. It is this view that has led pharmaceutical companies to use unconscionable tactics to pedal opioids, hollowing out our towns across America. And yes it’s true that chronic homelessness has something to do with addiction and mental illness -- though sometimes it’s a bit of a chicken or egg situation.

Edward at his “former home” on the corner of 5th and Stanford in Skid Row. Edward described the scene back then and said being homeless in the 90’s is nothing like it is today. He was overwhelmed by the sheer vastness of the new shape of homelessnes… — Edward at his “former home” on the corner of 5th and Stanford in Skid Row. Edward described the scene back then and said being homeless in the 90’s is nothing like it is today. He was overwhelmed by the sheer vastness of the new shape of homelessness in LA.

For those who descend into chronic homelessness, their connections to mainstream society are ripped away, as is their confidence, sense of self, and vision for the future--all the things which might bring them back from the brink. But for the rest of - our connections are not. So the question is, what kind of action can we take as individuals? Sure we can and will pour money into the system, but until we see individuals as having a claim on this earth as a soul we will continue to believe that one “deserves” to be housed according to the market’s value of them.

We hope that this project is the beginning of a longer journey to see how we can positively affect the homelessness crisis. In the meantime, we ask that you look in the eyes of our outcasts, extend your hands more regularly and ask yourself what responsibility we have to help foster connections, to keep those experiencing homelessness tethered to our world, to help restore meaning to the individual as valuable to our society not because of productivity or because of consumption but because of their status as human.

Steve Hatter, originally from Oklahoma, takes us back to visit the park where he attempted to commit suicide 19 years ago after finding himself blind, depressed and homeless for over a year. Steve has been housed for over 18 years now.

Christina Briggs in her Sunday best at Sunset Baptist Church in South Central. Christina has been housed 1 month after being chronically homeless for the better part of 2 decades.

Prolonging Our Future on Spaceship Earth

I woke up this morning, as I do every morning, to my radio gradually increasing in volume in such a way that for a few seconds I'm literally dreaming about whatever news NPR sees fit to broadcast over the airwaves. Of late, these few seconds have been depressing: Trump, Brexit, bombings, unrest somewhere or another.

Today, 'Earth Day', was sadly no different. I found myself staring at the cracked paint on our ceiling listening to the fact that China's more stringent requirements on recyclable waste mean they've been rejecting some of what we export, citing glass mixed up in bales of paper, insufficient quality of plastics, etc.

This is profoundly worrying to me. Not that China is sending stuff back, but that we're still sending recyclables there in the first place. I know, it’s been going on for years. We are hemorrhaging huge amounts of energy and resources and CO2 sending waste all over the world to 'recycle' it, often finding out later that it has merely been incinerated in cement kilns or worse.

In an attempt to stay sane, I often try and cauterize the part of my brain that thinks about global economics and politics, and concentrate on stuff closer to home, where helping to affect change doesn't seem like such a foreign and unrealistic concept, especially for someone as relatively uncommitted to any single cause as I am.

This more modest playing field has me thinking about the adage I was brought up with, once recycling became a thing. "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" in that order was what we were always told. I can't help but think either a huge chunk of society never got the "Reduce" and "Re-use" messaging or that they've succumbed to the narrative that “a healthy economy requires constant growth”.

While Cuba’s economic isolation has prevented it from accessing many new products, the resulting behavior is proof that most most of what we own and use has a lifespan well beyond that which we give it.

There's money in recycling, which is why you hear much, much more about it than the more recently popularized 'reusing' (see 'Worn Wear' advertising campaigns by the likes of Patagonia). Those blue bins? You're throwing money into them. Recycling doesn't discourage consumerism, in some cases quite the contrary, it can magically give rise to a clear conscience for people that like to have all the things (a bracket that includes me sometimes). Reducing waste, however, means ultimately less manufacturing, and often less consumption. Reusing certainly means both of these. But that may well mean a shrinking of the economy right? Yes. Yes, it does. It's here I get into the murky depths of socio-economics that has me confused and fighting for breath, questioning this whole hyper-capitalist machine we help maintain.

Myanmar scrapper on the Irrawaddy river finding a new use for the very ancient and very valuable hardwoods, unwittingly saving the felling of a tree that takes 100 years to mature.

Anyway, its Earth Day (it should be Earth Day every day). And in the spirit of progress, there are things even the least motivated of us can do to lessen our negative impact on the world around us, and it revolves around 'mitigation' — an altogether less bitter pill to swallow for most people than the 'stop something altogether' pill, which seems like a pretty unrealistic behavior when you look at the history of humanity.

While working on a project in New Zealand, we were lucky enough to see the old growth rainforests of Fjordland, a significant carbon sink in the Southern Hemisphere.

It was Alex Honnold that first made me aware of Mossy Earth, an organization that concentrates on restoring parts of what is the worlds most effective and dynamic carbon sink; our forests. While industries worldwide continue to clear-cut huge tracts of woodlands, forests, rainforests and jungle to provide us with household products, food or pharmaceuticals, Mossy Earth is doing the opposite.

Mossy Earth provides you tools with which you can calculate your own carbon footprint, and they plant trees on your behalf in some of the world's ecosystems that need this regrowth the most. They don't just leave it at that, they also ensure these trees survive to maturity and hence provide a valuable addition to regional rewilding efforts and one more leafy soldier in the grueling struggle against climate change.

This is, of course, no 'magic bullet'. There is no such thing in our current climate, we've left it way too late for a quick fix that isn't painful and hard-won. But what Mossy Earth is is a valuable tool for those of us that want to do something, and feel a little more engaged with the impact that we have on this planet.

In a day to day that often sees me chewing hungrily through resources - burning up power on the edit screens in front of me, buying expensive carbon-rich camera equipment or climbing gear, or worse still flying here and there to ply my craft - I get a little joy out of my emails that land in my inbox from the team at Mossy Earth. They're usually giving me the GPS coordinates of 'my trees' along with a picture of the ‘leafy soldier‘ planted on my behalf.

So, today, Earth Day, and every day moving forward, let's try to get better. I'm not suggesting we change the course of our lives drastically, I don't believe that's realistic en-mass unfortunately. What am I suggesting then? That we all think a little harder before we buy stuff, that we think a little harder before chucking stuff in that blue bin, and that we all consider helping Mossy Earth turn the brown areas of the map green again. By doing that, we're literally helping to ensure that we, or future generations, have a future on spaceship earth.

Chasing Coast

Winter/Spring 2019 already has us spinning wheels over a new project on the disappearing Louisiana wetlands. This environmental hazard is one of the most pressing issues in the lower 48 states, yet so few people are aware of it. On the upside, climate change has managed to stay in the news cycle this year— as if there is finally a concerted effort to force action on the issue. This is why we at Encompass Films feel the need to take our love for the outdoors and create content which highlights the devastation that is upon it.

We started the project last fall, looking to focus on 5 characters in a digital docu-series. Each character experiences the land loss in a different way. To begin, we filmed 3 individuals: a 50-something female duck hunter, a paragliding photographer, and a research scientist, all singing their own battle cry to save the coast. Meeting and learning about those characters was a great way to experience the wetlands and cajun culture. I have been to New Orleans a few times before, but had never made it south to the Parishes that protect it from the encroaching sea. Everyone knows New Orleans is sinking; few bother to explore the vast swamps that keep it from being engulfed. This time we journeyed south.

We rose before dawn, dressed in camo, zoomed on airboats to post up for the morning hunt. We sailed, camped on secluded barrier islands, took to the skies on wings with all sorts of camera gear strapped on tightly. We saw alligators, ate dirt, talked to the experts, began to learn exactly what they are facing. And we left more sure than ever that this was important work.

In the coming months, likely March/April, we plan to return to Louisiana to film two more characters, whom we have yet to cast for the project. We are still indeed looking for sponsors to come along for the ride. Our great friends at Peak Design and Sitka Gear have already signed on to support the project, so if you know anyone who’s interested, and who cares about the wetlands, we’d love to connect.

This Is How We Do It!

As documentarians, many of our jobs are with small 2 - 4 man teams. Often times getting the best footage requires creating a sense of intimacy with the subject — something that large crews just don’t allow for. But on occasion we get to soup-up our team to accomplish getting shots that are truly challenging to capture. The type of shots in which the margin of error is low and you are up against a clock. Often these shoots come with our client Red Bull, famous for pushing the limits of what can be done both by their world-class athletes and in the capture of those events.

This project was no exception. Working with Red Bull Air Force veterans Mike Swanson and Jeff Provenzano we headed out to Jay, Vermont to capture them parachuting and swooping during peak fall foliage. The lead up was as stressful as the shoot. As anyone who has lived in New England knows the seasons visible change can not be determined by a clock and every week we were waiting to pull the trigger on when exactly the production should happen. In the end, after booking and rebooking travel three times, we made the right call on when to arrive only to be defeated by high winds and rain.

A chance encounter with a local let us in on a secret - that our location was plagued with wind on a daily basis, not to mention the infamous ‘Jay Cloud’. So after losing a day and a bit of shooting on our 2 day shoot, we hustled, found a farm down the street and reworked the concept and some how still made hay.

We are super grateful to our talented team who were able to perform their craft despite constant changes and unexpected events. Our Phantom Tech - Nick Savander, First Camera Op - Adam Nawrot, drone team Johnny Beavers and Jacob Silverman, and our Vermont local knowledge guys New Atlas and the myriad of others who made the shoot possible. Oh, and the various leaf blower operators? Lets not forget about them.

Still Rolling 10 Years Later

10 Years ago, give or take a week, I cycled into the wet snow-covered environs of Ushuaia, Argentina’s southerly most city, and the end point for the majority on a North-South pilgrimage of the Americas. Beneath me was ‘Achilles’ the tandem, given his name over 18,000 miles earlier when his heavily laden bulk saw to it that my right achilles tendon tore slightly under the strain. Behind me was my Chilean good friend Alonso, the last of over 270 companions that all joined me for a portion of my journey, some for 5 minutes and others for months.

12 years ago, cycling south from Deadhorse’ and a tundra dimpled with squat, sooty drilling rigs to the north, I was equipped with my tandem and trailer, everything I needed to survive (including 8 days of food and some fishing line), a well loved Sony PD150 and most importantly, a foolish idea.

Nearly 13 years ago, with the help of Ed Stobart, a TV producer in London I came up with the hair brained idea of cycling a tandem bicycle from Alaska to Argentina and picking up random strangers to help me pedal on the way. Armed with my camera, I’d make a documentary about it and thereby reinvent myself as a filmmaker. Yeah. sure I would….

Well, there’s nothing like a bit of naivety to keep you moving forward. 2 years and 2 months after I left those Alaskan oil fields I had not only had the adventure of a lifetime with a myriad newfound friends, but I’d also filled up enough mini-DV tapes to make a half decent TV documentary with the help of Ginger Television entitled ‘Take A Seat’. That, thanks to Humfrey Hunter and Iain Macgregor, was shortly followed by a book of the same name.

Now, in 2018, I live on the other side of the world. I run a production company telling stories about the outdoors and how it changes people. I live and work with my wife Nadia who I met on the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia on that bicycle journey. In short, my entire life morphed into something else because of that one adventure. I will never stop being grateful for the support that allowed me to have the courage to start pedaling, and the army of people that shared the journey with me and very positively helped plot the course of my life from there on out.

Finding Truth: Myanmar's Elephants

This summer we were commissioned by a non-profit called The Elephant Project to make a documentary on the plight of Myanmar’s timber elephants. Elephants have traditionally been used to haul felled timber out of the forests of Asia. Recently, forests have been logged to such a degree that even governments traditionally unsympathetic to environmental issues have taken note. As such, the timber industry has shuttered, and its 25,000+ related parties (5000 of them domesticated elephants) must now find new jobs and in some cases new homes. As we were to find out, there was no simple solution.

We were able to do light research prior to leaving for the trip due to small reports coming out of English speaking journals and elephant rights watchdogs in the area. However, to tell a story you must find the best vehicle to share the information and often these days that vehicle will be an assortment of persons affected by the changes. There are a lot of barriers to finding these subjects from the comfort of your desk, so we set out for two weeks in August on a mission to travel around Myanmar to find such people .

We paired down our kit to the ultimate research combo -- a Sony A7Siii w/ 35m and 135m prime lenses (straying away from the 'do it all' zoom lens), a lightweight tripod, the new DJI Ronin S, a DJI Mavic Pro and a couple both LAV and boom mics. With this, we were prepared to shoot high-quality content with gear that we could pack into one medium size camera bag.

But the real problem was not the shooting. For the first time in our careers, as we spoke to people on the ground, we found ourselves wondering what the truth really was. Part of the issue was a predictable lack of transparency from Myanmar's government stakeholders, but also, as we interviewed rural private elephant owners we realized that they just didn't have a lot of solid information themselves. As we left the jungle and Myanmar behind we realized that we had a big task ahead of us, and though we were definitely closer to identifying the players and likely characters for our film, we realized that there was a lot more investigative work to be done before we could say with certainty what will happen to these elephants.

One thing we could say for sure however, is that Myanmar’s relationship to its elephants is quite complex. They are the country with the greatest amount of elephant experts from caretakers to veterinarians to biologists--this country knows elephants! We witnessed a elephant have a small surgery in a river. The elephant's mahout not only administered local anesthetic but also sang a lullaby to the elephant for the duration of its surgery. His care was so touching and so beautiful that it forced the observer to reckon with simplified view that if you domesticate elephants then it means you don’t care about them. As always, when making a documentary you are forced to examine your sacredly held world views as you follow the rabbit hole to bifurcating channels of new information. Stay tuned to find out what’s really happening.

Alpine Sleepover: Lone Pine

"The Crow" enjoys a well earned tipple while waiting for his dinner.

To the outsider, it would be easy to confuse 'Dom at work' and 'Dom at play'. Both modes might involve frolicking in the mountains somewhere, but in my downtime, I relish the opportunity to take more still photographs and limit myself to just a small camera - my trusty Sony A7iii to be precise - and an ND equipped 35mm lens. Not only does this limitation keep pack weight pleasantly low, it also forces me to frame a shot without the use of a 'lazy zoom'. A third essential benefit is that this gear doesn't waste much time that should be spent cutting loose (not literally, that would be foolish).

The goal of this little foray was the summit of Lone Pine Peak in the Western Sierra (California) via the North Ridge. My partner and the subject was my good friend Michael 'The Crow' Crocco, Red Bull veteran and a marketing magician at New Balance. A few weeks before we left on this overnighter he called and said, "Dom, take me on an adventure that takes me out of my comfort zone". That ruled out mountain biking, given he could leave me for dead on the trails. But climbing or mountaineering? Hmmm. With an exposed overnight bivi somewhere?? That's enough to get anyone mildly excited. And so it was, that after a tuna melt in Lone Pine we headed up the north ridge with whiskey, coffee, and snacks!

It's possible to climb the ridge and descend in a long day, but for someone new to climbing that kind of speed isn't fun. Anyhow, easily half the fun of climbing and the outdoors for me is sharing it with people and having time to explore, so planning for an overnighter in an atmospheric place is easily worth a little extra weight. The sleeping bag and shelter give you a comfortable sunset, a night punctuated only by the sound of the wind, the sunrise, and an opportunity to sip coffee while you enjoy the warmth creeping back into the air. It also provides the best light for photography without having to worry about wasting precious daylight for the descent. The most important rule for me however when I'm not actually 'working' is: "Don't let the shot compromise the fun". Not exactly Chinese proverb worthy, but important none-the-less.

Ulju: Traveling To Far Flung Festivals

Panorama of Seoraksan National Park.  South Korea's very own Yosemite (climber on left wall). — Panorama of Seoraksan National Park. South Korea's very own Yosemite (climber on left wall).

Film festivals present an opportunity not only to see your work on the big screen and see the audience's reaction to it, but also the opportunity to connect with fellow filmmakers in a productive, social, and sometimes highly entertaining environment. Then there are film festivals that provide you the opportunity to go somewhere you’ve never dreamed of going. Ulju Mountain Film Festival checked all these boxes, situated in the hills above the little industrial city of Ulju in Ulsan Province of South Korea.

Climbing partner and film protagonist Andrew Lenz enjoying the wall.

Quite frankly, I went to Ulju because they paid for me to come and Korea had been in the news a lot at the time making me want to experience it for myself. Upon arrival, it quickly became apparent that the Koreans take hospitality pretty seriously. Adventure filmmakers aren’t used to being treated like royalty, so being shuffled along red carpets serenaded by, among other acts, a locally renowned K-Pop band was definitely eye-opening. Having a welcome banquet beneath the steep roofs of South Korea’s largest climbing wall is also something I won’t forget in a hurry. In fact, just when you thought the quirky entertainment was coming to a close, there was always something else to keep us occupied. A South Korean yodeler? Yup, they exist (and damn they're good!). Sharing all this with fellow filmmakers and discussing your ideas, past and future amongst the relative madness is a rewarding process.

Jean leads the way down one of many staircaases in Seoraksan

Penis Lightbulb: stick it to your patrons. — Penis Lightbulb: stick it to your patrons.

However, the real reason I was interested in South Korea was a little known park I'd heard of called Seoraksan. So, accompanied by Andrew Lenz (the protagonist of our film “Above the Alley, Beneath the Sky”) and Jean our newfound Korean friend that agreed to help prevent us getting totally lost, we headed to the National Park to explore its valleys and climb the ethereal domed peaks, complete with monastic dwellings in the occasional cave and crevice. The climbing was of course fantastic, but the local culture had a certain flair that really made things interesting: bus stops with seats that are made to look like bums, coffee shops with intentionally phallic light bulbs. Korean BBQ. Cat puzzles. Love hotels. A thousand things that are forever lost in translation and yet providing tiny pieces of an experience that made a huge tapestry of fun.

In conclusion to these ramblings, I’d recommend any filmmaker to seek out the outlying film festivals and enter your film, there’s no knowing what you might experience once you get there!

You can find more info about Ulju Mountain Film Festival here: http://www.mountainfilmalliance.org/members/detail/ulju-mountain-film-festival/