Full disclosure: I’m working as the Social Media & Crowdsource Consultant for the film HUMBLE BEAUTY: Skid Row Artists. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s move on to the interview with the directors, Judith Vogelsang and Leititia Popa Schwartz.
It's also about the ubiquity of art. People will make art, no matter how difficult the circumstances. In return, art changes lives.
Back in 2003, we read an article in the LA Times about a group of Skid Row painters who had their first art gallery show. It was astounding to realize that there were artists on Skid Row. Los Angeles is the homeless capital of America and Skid Row is the area that homeless people gravitate to. There are many social services and missions there to feed, clothe and offer counseling to the thousands of men, women and children that have no other place to go. It's a place that most mainstream residents of LA avoid. It's dirty, noisy and dangerous. There are people with mental illness, alcoholics, criminals -- and just people who have had a series of terribly unfortunate circumstances--old-fashioned bad luck--and have no home, no family to turn to anymore.
When we read about the show, we wanted to meet them and interview them for a "passion project" short film. We went downtown and the culture shock was visceral. This was another world than the LA we were used to. Instead of being empty, the streets were teeming with people. People were living in tents or in sleeping bags or in cardboard boxes. Everyone was talking loud and many people seemed pretty scary. Once we found the Skid Row Art Workshop, then on San Julian and 5th Streets, the founder and director of the workshop, Lillian Abel Calamari, a trained and talented painter who was also a social worker, welcomed us inside. There were dozens of people intently drawing, painting, collaging, working with paper mache, mixing paints, and cleaning brushes. It was a quiet and busy place full of concentration. We started interviewing some of the artists whose work appealed to us. We were hooked. We kept returning for more and more of their amazing life stories and stunning artwork. They were all self-taught, outsider artists and their paintings were remarkable.
DL: What was your relationship with these artists?
Judith: We visited where they lived, tiny rooms in refurbished hotels with the bath and communal kitchen down the hall. We went to Skid Row community events. We became friends with many of the people we met. Trust is a big issue with residents of Skid Row. They don't trust people easily. They've had their trust betrayed by society and it's not easy to gain it back. But after five years, people accepted us, trusted us, and they opened up more of the truth of their lives to our questions and our cameras. It was an eye-opening, fascinating experience. We were told about another art workshop on Skid Row: the Lamp Art Project, run by Lamp Community, an organization that helps the mentally ill homeless. We met another remarkable artist/social worker, Rory White, who founded and led it. Rory had his own story of how he got to Skid Row from opulent Big Sur and that's all part of HUMBLE BEAUTY, too. There are extraordinarily talented artists at both Lamp and the Skid Row Art Workshop.
Art transformed the lives of these lost souls so that they were no longer lost. Perhaps because making a painting is an accomplishment and they had few accomplishments in their prior lives. Perhaps because making a painting is a focused activity requiring sobriety and concentration. That can lead to doing a day's work or getting through a whole day with no alcohol or drugs. Perhaps making art is a way into our own psyches and our personal expression expiates some of our demons. It's kind of a mystery. But the painters we met and got to know over several years, all felt that art had reinvented them. Art had helped them find their true identities and gave them a reason to live. This was a story we wanted to tell on film.
DL: How did you become interested in the subject?
Letitia: Judy and I were fascinated with the idea of people needing art, to see it, to make it, to be in the presence of it. We were in the middle of another documentary with the same subject when we found the skid row workshop. We felt that these artists with their lives and their work define more clearly our belief. And then we felt kind of related with them. They like to paint no matter the circumstances, we like to make films whether we have the money for the production or not. Yes, we were very interested in their lives and in their work and came back again and again. And the people who saw our film shared the same attraction.
DL: Two directors on one film is something of a rarity. What was that like?
Letitia: There are films directed by brothers, or friends or a husband and wife team. This film started with a discussion at the DGA. Then a couple of phone calls. We wanted to make a ten minute film to be shot in a couple of days and five years later... It's a joy to work with another talented person. Judy always likes my good ideas and if I don't have one, she finds amazing ways to make the film brilliant.
This is a profession when we need an audience. She is my audience and I'm hers. Sometimes when I worked alone I wanted to know what she thought about what I just finished. Her comments were my greatest reward. Sometimes we do come to an impasse where one of us thinks one thing and the other one thinks another. When that happens I think the person who more passionately states her case, (not always the right one) wins the argument.
DL: It seems like the subject matter might have been a hard sell? How have people responded to the film so far?
Judith: Just the word, "documentary," can be a hard sell. There's something about it that sounds like it's going to be boring or strictly instructional with no aesthetic qualities. Of course, it's often just the opposite. Many documentaries are unforgettable experiences and some of them change our lives. Once we started showing HUMBLE BEAUTY to audiences, their response was electric. Many people cried and laughed at the same time. Several told us they would never view a homeless person in the same way again. Most audiences responded very positively to the film. We started entering it in film festivals and it did pretty well on the festival circuit, won some awards. We made it on a shoestring budget that we financed mostly on credit cards. We shot, wrote, directed and edited it ourselves -- with help from friends, family and colleagues. It was clearly a labor of love and maybe that trumped the lack of widescreen and HD! We got good reviews in national publications including a true rave review -- 5 out of 5 stars-- from FilmThreat.com. Then it aired on KCET, public television in LA, in a special fund-raising broadcast for the station. KCET presented HUMBLE BEAUTY to American Public Television, the main program service for all PBS stations. APT accepted the film and will give it national distribution this Fall, if we can raise enough money for the many expenses required to get the film ready.
DL: The film screened at festivals and was broadcast on KCET. Some people might be wondering why you’re doing a crowdfund campaign?
Judith: Getting your film on PBS stations all across the country is a dream-come-true, the Holy Grail for documentaries. However, we’re not compensated for these broadcasts and there are thousands of dollars in expenses to get the film ready. We have to re-edit to exact time and format standards of PBS, purchase Errors & Omissions insurance, extend costly music rights and, if at all possible, mount a publicity campaign to insure the film gets seen at these many stations. Each station will decide for itself whether or not it will air HUMBLE BEAUTY. So promoting the film to the various program directors at these stations is a good idea, if it can be afforded.
As I said, we paid for the production ourselves, out-of-pocket and on credit cards. When we showed the rough cut to some friends, Joanne Storkan and Madeline DiMaggio of Honest Engine Films, and quite unexpectedly, one of those miracles that rarely happens happened. Joanne wrote us a check to cover the professional post-production on the film. So it looks and sounds great! But now we have to address all the new expenses involved with getting it on national public TV stations. We can't do this alone. We knew we needed help and decided to do the crowdfunding thing. So we took a leap of faith and launched our campaign on IndieGogo.com on August 1st. Luckily, we have a non-profit fiscal sponsor, the wonderful From the Heart Productions, headed by Carole Dean, a longtime supporter of indie film in Los Angeles. So all contributions are tax deductible, which is a nice incentive for donors. We realize not everyone can contribute but we are asking everyone to help spread the word! We really want to share the life-changing experience that making art had on the Skid Row folks with millions of viewers across the country. It's an empowering and illuminating theme that more people should be made aware of.
To the HUMBLE BEAUTY Indiegogo campaign.
To the HUMBLE BEAUTY website.
Judith Vogelsang worked as a director and assistant director for the major studios and networks for over 20 years and now produces, directs and writes through her own company, Stone Harbor Films, Inc. She is a member of the DGA, was nominated for a DGA Award for directing TV, and is a documentary member of the TV Academy and Cinewomen.
Letitia worked in Romania as a TV film director and writer. She immigrated to the United States with her son, married and worked under the name of Letitia Popa Schwartz directing documentaries, theatre and films. She received a local Cable Ace nomination for the documentary “H.O.M.E.,” a Gold Medal for Best Director at the Sofia Film Festival, and twice a Special Award at the Monte Carlo Film Festival. She is a member of the DGA.
