By Ryan Thomas
The Independent Picture House is hosting a free screening and panel discussion this Saturday on homelessness in Charlotte as part of our Community Impact Film Series. The screening starts at 11 a.m. and includes two documentaries: the short Rooted for the Future and the feature Call Me By My Name.
IPH spoke to Steve Umberger, the director of Call Me By My Name, ahead of the event. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
I’m curious about the origins of the film and how this project came together.
I’m a theater director and have been for a long time — long enough that I got interested in doing something different. I love documentary films, so I began to think I would like to do something that combines documentary and theater. [Val Rosenquist, senior pastor at First United Methodist Church] was interested in an arts program for the homeless community, because she noticed there were a lot of talented and engaged people [in that community]. I said, “You should do an acting class. I’ll teach it.” And it went from there. I wanted them to tell their stories.
It was a long process, because a lot of people in this community operate under the radar for lots of reasons. For them to come out of the shadows was a big deal. Some were hesitant and didn’t continue with the project. Ultimately, we arrived at six people who stayed together for almost three years, which was sort of stunning.
So they’re originating the material and writing their own pieces to perform?
Yeah, all based on their lives. I was trying to get them to reflect on their situation: where they had come from, why they had arrived at this point, how they felt about it. It takes a lot of capacity to be self-reflective, especially in the homeless community. But they did it, because they wanted people to hear these stories. They thought it might make a difference.
About eight months in, I thought it would be effective to see them in their daily lives. They immediately said no. Then I broached it a couple of weeks after that, and one of them said, “Let me put it to you this way: If you force me to do it, I will.” It became clear that they really did want to do that. I have a production company, and Jay Thomas is my camera guy. He and I made the plans and went with them. It grew over those three years to be what it is; we would constantly revise the script and include experiences that they were having.
Did most of them have previous arts or theater experience, or was this a new thing for them?
Zero. None. That was part of the challenge. Belinda says in the film, “I realized that what you were doing was asking me to tell my story.” I think they felt better doing it, and they liked the idea of people hearing them. This was my impulse at the beginning. That’s why I was interested. There are certain stereotypes of any community, then that’s what it becomes. And I was pretty sure it wasn’t. I was pretty sure it was as varied as any other population. And it is.
What are your hopes for the film? What do you want people to take away from it?
This issue is not going to be solved overnight. It’s not going to be solved by one thing. If this film can allow people to see the issue a little differently, and see the people who are experiencing homelessness a little differently, that’s maybe as good as it gets.
The tagline I use is “A film about the creativity of the unhoused community.” It’s creativity in all sorts of ways — creativity on this project, but really the creativity to create a life, a way of living where there isn’t one. Yet they have managed to get from lily pad to lily pad on a daily basis.
The other thing, too, is I would say, “What do you want people to do [to help]?” And they told us, they have enough food, they have enough clothes. The one thing they all said over and over again: “affordable housing.”
Join us on Saturday, Nov. 9, for the Community Impact Film Series event on homelessness. You can find more information and reserve your free ticket here:
This program is supported in part by North Carolina Humanities the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
This program is also supported, in part, with additional funding from Kathryn & Luke Kissam and Hood Hargett Associates.