Street roots., May 27, 2016, Page 9, Image 9

Program alumnus and current board member Talilo Marfil on the set of a music video for Swiggle Mandela.
Outside the Frame celebrates the work of local homeless filmmakers with its premiere June 7
BY ANN-DERRICK GAILLOT
STAFF WRITER
Take Averi was 18 when he became
I homeless and on his own. He moved out
I of his foster home a month after aging
out of the system and, despite his best
efforts at getting and keeping his own
apartment, within six months he was in a
shelter.
“In foster care you’re not prepared for
anything with life at all,” Averi said. “And
once you age out of the system, that’s it
You’re out You are on your own. You don’t
have anywhere to go; you can’t do anything.”
It was not long before Averi found himself
at Outside In, an agency serving homeless
and low-income youths in Portland.
Soon after, in 2012, he was encouraged to
participate in an intensive filmmaking
workshop called Guerrilla Theater with
Israeli-American filmmaker Nili Yosha.
There he learned to operate a digital
camera, lighting and sound recording
equipment and compose camera shots and
angles.
Best of all, though, Averi was able to
explore his lifelong love of writing by
helping produce the film’s script
His skin is decorated with stick-and-poke
text tattoos, but most of his writing, he said,
is kept in the hundreds of journals he has
managed to fill over his short lifetime. The
film workshops at Outside In were his first
opportunity to present some of his writing
to a wider audience as well as distract
himself from the many stressors of being
young and on his own.
“When your entire livelihood is condensed
into ‘I’m 19 years old and I’m homeless,
what am I doing with my life?’, it’s hard to
be creative,” Averi said. “It’s hard to be
anything besides in the mindset of ‘Where
am I going to go, what am I going to do, how
am I going to eat?’” Guerilla Theater at
Outside In gave him an escape from that,
allowing him to explore an artistic outlet he
may have never been exposed to otherwise
in a safe and supportive environment
Guerilla Theater has become own full-
fledged organization called Outside the
Frame, and the film Averi worked on, “The
Lost Boys of Portlandia,” is set to premiere
at the organization’s June 7 gala at
Revolution Hall, alongside other short films
produced by Outside the Frame
participants.
Based on the classic story of Peter Pan,
“The Lost Boys of Portlandia” tells the tale
of young people experiencing homelessness
deciding whether to leave the “Neverland”
of life on Portland’s streets to return to the
mainstream society that judges and
ostracizes them.
Averi and other filmmakers will be in
attendance to present their projects and
answer questions from audience members.
“A lot of people speak on behalf of
homeless youth,” said Yosha, Outside the
Frame’s executive director. “This is an
opportunity for people to hear directly from
the source.”
partner organization to Outside In,
Outside the Frame engages youth
experiencing homelessness in hands-on
filmmaking workshops, giving them the
opportunity to focus on a creative outlet,
learn technical filmmaking skills and share
their stories and perspectives with the
wider Portland community. Yosha first
planted the seeds of the organization in
2009 when she was hired by Outside In to
run a peer education program funded by a
three-year federal grant That initial
program, called Guerilla Theater, is the one
Averi participated in.
“I was like, how do I engage a group of
transient youth who have a lot of creativity
and a lot of energy and no tolerance for
exercises in futility? Well, I’ll make movies.
There’s something for everyone to do, and
A
What: Outside the Frame, in collaboration with Outside In, presents “The Lost Boys
of Portlandia," a new documentary featuring the real lost children of Portland. In a riff
on Peter Pan, homeless youth debate if and how to return to mainstream society
while creating their own film version of the iconic story. The evening will include
original film shorts by homeless youth and a Q&A with the filmmakers.
When: 7 p.m. Tuesday. June 7. Doors 6 p.m.
Where: Revolution Hall, 1300 SE Stark St. Portland. OR
Tickets: Free, all ages event. Tickets available at tfpdx.brawnpapertickets.org/ -
Donations welcomed.
most importantly then you can get it out.
there for the public to see and hear,” Yosha
said.
The daughter of acclaimed Israeli
independent filmmakers, Yosha grew up
understanding the power of film to change
minds and wanted to harness that power to
challenge stigmas against young people
experiencing homelessness and housing
instability held by film audiences and the
participants alike.
“People internalize all that stuff that
people say about them,” Yosha said. “I’ve
been told by the participants that it’s like a
therapeutic intervention because you tell
your story, and then you realize what your
story is, and then you can kind of move on.
It’s good all around.”
Yosha amicably left Outside In and ended
the Guerilla Theater program after the
federal grant ran out, but her experience
malting films with the youth at Outside In
always , stuck with her, and she worked to
bring her program back.
In June 2015, Yosha did just that when
Outside the Frame became its own
nonprofit Now the organization relies on
individual donations and money earned
through contracting youth film workshops at
Outside In led by Yosha and a team of
professional filmmakers, and making media
content for local businesses and
organizations. So far, participants in the
program have made short films and music
videos exploring, in their own words, issues
such as domestic violence, addiction, sexual
health and daily life navigating homelessness
as a young person.
See STREETWISE, page 11