Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I screened this film because I wanted to know if it's appropriate for a class in peace and justice studies I teach. It is. Directors Tommy Wiseau and Kaya Redford have put together a very nice collage of homeless people from the streets of LA.
I emphasize the word "collage." If you're looking for facts and figures and analysis, you won't find it in this film. Analysis and data are important--crucial--but their problem is that they tend to distract us from the faces of real people. "Homeless in America" fills that gap by introducing us to a number of very real folks. The film is deliberately impressionistic, and consequently has a strong visual impact that sticks with the viewer.
Some of the unforgettable people interviewed in the film: There's the 70-year-old man, black as ebony, beard snow white, who declaims with the eloquence and fire of a prophet. There's Roy, a baseball-capped man who seems emotionally disturbed, who says that he's on the street because he's running from his problems, but wonders why society isn't a bit more ready to help him now that he wants to quit running. There's the quietly sobbing black girl who lives in a makeshift in a freeway tunnel. An intruder has just stabbed a friend of hers. There's the attractive middle-age woman who claims that she was once the wife of an NBA player, a multimillionare. Who knows if she's telling the truth? Who cares? There's the LA chief of police, who talks in the clipped language of the bureaucrat about the "issue" of homelessness, and there's the aging and weary-looking director of the LA Mission who says, grief and frustration burring his voice, that we need to learn how to love better in this country.
All in all, a good cinematic introduction to homelessness. Especially recommended for middle class folks who generally won't get within a block of a street person.
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Item Name: Homeless In America; Studio:Wiseau-Films
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