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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (March 1, 2013)
Street roots March 1, 2013 P H O T O C O U R T E S Y O F JO E A N D H A R R Y G A N T Z Our American Winter Filmmakers Joe and Harry Gantz talk about their experience documenting Portland's poverty BY JAKE THOMAS S T A F F W R IT E R Jo e Gantz: Well, you’ll remember that the Arab Spring was a time of unlimited he Great Recession began nearly five potential, a time of awakening and change in years ago. Since then, economists and a positive direction. It kind of occurred to us the media have produced a string of that at this time of need, when so many graphs, as well as employment and financial families were losing homes and losing jobs data that show that the economy has made and tremendously in need of some form of a sluggish, yet, clear march toward recovery. assistance, we, as a country, were focusing But what is often absent from this tepidly on cutting budgets and cutting services and optimistic picture are all the people who not looking at the human side of the weren’t lifted up by the recovery, who never equation. So it felt like the potential of this quite saw the recession end and never country was being lost a little. We felt like stopped worrying. this is an American Winter that will Harry and Joe Gantz, two Emmy Award hopefully be followed by an American winning filmmakers best known for Spring. capturing life in action in the documentary series “Taxicab Confessions” and the Harry Gantz: The point is that we want documentary film “Sex with Strangers” as people to see a little of themselves in there. well as others, present an intimate portrait Everybody knows someone who lost a job. of eight Portland families left behind by the Everybody knows someone who was recovery in “American Winter.” The film, foreclosed on or is at threat of being which played during the Portland foreclosed on. So this is a unique time with International Film Festival and premiers large new populations of poor. The formerly March 18 on HBO, captures candid middle class have fallen into poverty, and it’s moments in the lives of families who seem happening at the same time previous cuts to to live in a state of perpetual dread as they social serves will just make it a perfect drift from crisis to crisis, worrying about storm. These social workers you see in the how to keep the electricity on, how to pay film are having to do so much more with so for housing and the toll their new-found much less. poverty is taking on their kids. The Gantz brothers selected Portland for J.T.: Did anything surprise you? Was there the film’s setting, where they used 211Info, anything that was unexpected? a hotline that refers people in need to social services, to find the families whose lives Joe: I think the thing that struck me first they document in revealing detail. Portland and most powerfully was to watch families caught their eye because, unlike Los who were dealing with this kind of stress on Angeles or New York, it wasn’t the obvious a daily basis, on an hourly basis, that goes place to tap into hard times. Nonetheless, it with not having enough to meet the needs provided a bounty of stories of a lost of your family, to be continually worried American dream. about losing your electricity or your heat or T “American Winter”, filmed in Portland, makes its television debut March 18 on HBO. Jake Thom as: Why did you select the title “American Winter?” the lease on yourhouse, of being evicted or not having enough food. Being a parent in the worst-case scenario, you don’t want to transmit that sense of panic and dread to your kid, but, on the other hand, you don’t want to lie to them completely. And these parents are just so overwhelmed by this. It’s not a way to live. It’s traumatizing to the entire family. I personally think that having watched that in making this film and lived so close to them as they were going through it that it has long-term effects on families and on kids. Kids who go through this - 1 see a 40-year movement in the U.S. will not do In the m edia sta rtin g w ith well in school, they will not be able to fulfill their the Reagan adm inistration potential or will often be to demonize people who traumatized to the point receive social services, where they don’t finish w ith the welfare queen and high school or don’t the 4 7 percent, and we finish college and don’t become the members of found the opposite to be society that we expect true. Sure, there's some and hope for, but they’ll fraud in the system, bat the be so traumatized that they become a burden on m a jo rity of people there society. are because of some J.T.: Where would you say our social safety net is most vulnerable, if anywhere? Joe: That’s a tough unforeseen circumstances. They want to w ork. They want to support th e ir fam ily. They want the d ig n ity of a jo b ." question. I d like to come C O - D IR E C T O R , at it slightly differently. A lot of people that we worked with spoke about how it’s so hard to get help and you have to go through so many hoops. You have to call into 211 at the right time at the month for some services. And then if you do get a job and make a little See AMERICAN WINTER, page 5 ~~~ H A R O TG A S TZ A M E R IC A N W IN T E R
