Coming to PBS’s Independent Lens tonight, Monday, May 16: DOGTOWN REDEMPTION
Amir Soltani and Chihiro Wimbush’s look at the intersection of recycling and homelessness made its world premiere at Mill Valley last year, where it won an audience award. The doc has also appeared at fests in Salem and Santa Monica, and at local screenings in San Francisco and Oakland.
Set in the titular West Oakland neighborhood, Soltani and Wimbush’s film profiles individuals subsisting on the fringes through regular scavenging for recyclables. Their base of operation is Alliance Metals, a recycling center which prides itself on helping the homeless by offering them some means of earning an honest living. But as the film soon reveals, the situation isn’t quite so rosy: Alliance Metals has its detractors, some who claim the business is exploitative, using a vulnerable population to keep it in operation while paying them very little, and others, representative of gentrification in the area, who take issue with the consequences of the homeless in the area, such as litter. While this debate figures throughout this somewhat rough-hewn but engaging project, with the fate of Alliance Metals determined by its end, the filmmakers are more focused on several resilient subjects – though they don’t all have happy endings.
what (not) to doc 