The BulleTin • Thursday, april 22, 2021 A13
AN OSCAR NOMINEE
WITH OREGON ROOTS
Grant County graduate earns
2nd nomination with his latest
documentary, ‘Hunger Ward’
lack fundamental resources such as running
water, electricity or access to health care.
“In some small sense, I experienced some
of that lack myself, and I wanted to make sure
that whatever I devoted my career to, there’s
an attempt to use my career for good to get
change,” Fitzgerald said.
BY RUDY DIAZ
His 2018 film “Lifeboat,” also nominated for
Blue Mountain Eagle
ilmmaker Skye Fitzgerald carried the les- an Oscar, followed search and rescue opera-
sons he learned in high school in the tiny tions off the coast of Libya.
“Hunger Ward,” competing in this year’s short
town of Monument all the way to war-
documentary category, focuses on two
torn Yemen, the setting for his latest
therapeutic feeding centers in Yemen for
documentary “Hunger Ward,” which
children suffering from malnutrition.
is in the running for an Academy
He said the Oscar nomination gives the
Award at Sunday’s ceremony.
documentary another chance to raise
It’s Fitzgerald’s second Oscar nom-
awareness about the conflict.
ination, and he said his time grow-
“It’s important that I use my own
ing up in rural Grant County taught
tools as a filmmaker to try to intervene
him the value of hard work and gave
Fitzgerald
and bring the issue to the largest au-
him an appreciation of “the simple
dience possible to alter this unfolding
things in life” when his family moved
to a house 16 miles outside of Monument that tragedy that doesn’t need to occur because of
lacked running water and electricity when he
this human-caused war,” Fitzgerald said.
was in eighth grade.
Fitzgerald said he shot the film over 30 days
“The fact that we didn’t have running water in January and February last year in Yemen,
or electricity made me appreciate them all the which is caught in a war between Saudi Ara-
more when I went to college in La Grande at
bia-backed pro-government forces and the
Eastern Oregon University,” he said.
rebel Houthi movement.
Fitzgerald said he knew he wanted to pur-
Filming in a conflict zone was challenging,
sue a career where he could bring to light the
especially when the Saudi coalitions reject
challenges faced by others in the world who
journalists and filmmakers in the country. He
F
Dispatch
Continued from A1
The resulting pilot program
would cost the county approximately
$250,000 to $300,000 and would
strengthen an existing program, the
Mobile Crisis Assessment Team, or
MCAT, by funding two mental health
workers to respond to calls of suicidal
subjects without involving law en-
forcement.
Police officers would still be dis-
patched if the person is known to
have a weapon or has attempted sui-
cide before.
Leaders of Redmond Police De-
partment and Bend Police Depart-
ment are supportive of the idea, Har-
ris said. If approved, the program
could begin in September.
“Law enforcement has told us this
is a great place to start, and that it
would help them out tremendously
if we were able to take those off their
hands,” Harris said.
Data from Deschutes 911 shows
these responses last an average of two
hours and rarely require a police pres-
ence, Harris said. And just as police
are ill-equipped to respond to mental
health calls, mental health workers are
not trained in situational awareness
and other law enforcement concepts.
The pilot program would involve
training for mental health workers to
operate police radios and know when
to call for backup when they feel their
safety is at risk. Fortunately, studies
from successful similar programs in
the U.S. show that’s a rare occurrence,
Harris said.
Submitted photo
Skye Fitzgerald filming a search and rescue operation in the Southern Mediterranean.
said his party was detained in Yemen for seven
hours before being released.
“You have to fight very hard and in nuanced
ways to get into the conflict zone,” Fitzgerald
said. “Once you’re there you have to work in
careful, delicate ways to keep yourself from
danger.”
Seeing children die was extremely difficult,
he said, but the crew wanted to portray the war
authentically — even if it was hard to watch.
“To me, it made the project even more im-
portant because it was so challenging,” Fitz-
gerald said. “Just because something is hard, it
A unique Lane County program,
CAHOOTS, is considered a national
model in crisis response. CAHOOTS
is tied in with a medical clinic, which
allows 911 operators to dispatch
two-person teams consisting of an
EMT and a mental health worker in
an ambulance.
Such an arrangement is not cur-
rently in the works in Deschutes
County, but local leaders are looking
at expanding the types of emergency
calls mental health workers respond
to, like disorderly conduct and tres-
passing, calls that often involve a
mental health component.
There are four programs in the
county that currently address mental
health crises.
• The Bend City Council-funded
Crisis Response Team, a mental
doesn’t mean that it’s not worthwhile.”
Without electricity in Monument, Fitzgerald
said he did not have a chance to learn much
about cinema and media until he went to col-
lege, and his family is helping others dream
big through the annual Dream Scholarship
awarded to a graduate of Monument High
School who is pursuing higher education.
Fitzgerald said success is not tied to where
a person went to school or even innate talent:
It’s about will and a willingness to improve.
The 93rd Academy Awards ceremony is
Sunday, 5-8 p.m. on ABC.
health unit within the Bend Police
Department.
• Bend Police’s grant-funded
Co-Responder program, which em-
beds two Deschutes County mental
health workers in the Bend Police
Department. Mental health coun-
selor Abby Levin responds alongside a
Bend officer to calls in city limits and
connects subjects with services. Har-
ris said the program has been a big
success, diverting an increasing num-
ber of people from the justice system
each year, but that only shows the
need in the region.
Levin is only able to respond on
calls during her four 10-hour shifts
per week, 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday
through Thursday.
“We could use it round-the-clock,”
Harris said.
The program is assured federal
grant funding through October 2023.
• The county’s MCAT, which re-
sponds to mental health calls county-
wide and in the emergency room at
St. Charles Bend, though not along-
side deputies in their vehicles. Re-
sponse times vary though they’ve
been decreasing and can be as short
as 10 to 15 minutes, according to De-
schutes County Mental Health.
In 2020, MCAT responded on
9,500 calls, a jump of 45% from 2019.
• The county also operates the Sta-
bilization Center, opened in 2020, on
the Bend law enforcement campus on
Poe Sholes Drive. It provides services
to adults and children experiencing
short-term mental health crisis.
e e
Reporter: 541-383-0325,
gandrews@bendbulletin.com
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