Imagine the scene: The soles of cheap running shoes as the only breaking mechanism scruffy homeless men have as they barrel down a twisting North Vancouver street riding a shopping cart at 55-kilometre an hour.
Homeless men with a fondness for this kind racing and are the focus of Murray Siple's feature-length documentary, Carts of Darkness. Locals can attend a free screening followed by a discussion with Siple and the film's director of photography at Quest University Saturday (Nov.28).
The former snowboarding filmmaker spent years living in Whistler filming his snowboarding buddies until 1996, when a car accident left him a wheelchair bound quadriplegic. Siple's accident changed his life drastically and altered how the filmmaker perceived his own career.
"I'd been writing scripts after I got hurt, trying to forget about documentary filmmaking because I was in a wheelchair and just didn't think I could do that type of filmmaking anymore."
After a soul-searching visit to Southeast Asia, Siple said he figured out the key to his previous film success.
"I realized, the reason I was successful at filmmaking before was because I would simply take a camera with no money and go and film things that interested me. When I found the right subject and showed people, if I got a good reaction I knew I had a film."
Shortly after realizing how he could start filming documentaries again, the idea for Carts of Darkness came to Siple one Sunday evening while he was grocery shopping.
"There was this group of men [were outside the store], totally ragged, shirtless, loud and funny. It reminded me of snowboarding in a way, like how they were rebellious, doing their own thing and getting away with it."
Carts of Darkness follows Big Al, Fergie, and Bob while they search for the perfect cart (ones with foot grips but without bulky coin boxes), fill them with recyclable bottles and race them down the steep streets of North Vancouver.
The National Film Board of Canada released the 59-minute documentary in 2008, after Siple spent three years making it. Filming was set back when one of the main characters, Big Al, went to jail for 10 months, but Siple said it didn't impede his progress because he'd planned to spend a significant amount of time making the documentary.
"I wanted to see the progression in people's lives that I was filming. I didn't want to just exploit them for what they were doing at the time. I wanted to be with them in the film and learn about them and see where their ups and downs were happening," the director said.
In the film, Big Al explained he's fairly content with lifestyle of bottle collecting and cart racing.
"I'm making money while I'm doing my sport."
Another homeless bottle collector explains how recycling allows him to live a free life.
"We're not prisoners. We should not be prisoners of the economic system we're living in. We should be free, free people."
Exploring the sub-culture of homeless cart racing in Vancouver, appealed to Siple on many levels.
"It opens up a world that we didn't know about. A world where people are artists, they may not be homeless, they may not have any addictions but they just like being free and those were all fascinating to me."
As a wheelchair bound quadriplegic, Siple said he hopes Carts of Darkness breaks down social stereotypes of homeless and disable people.
"Like many people, I would think shopping carts equals homeless, drug addict. Well in my film you see it doesn't. I think being in a wheelchair is similar. I know sometimes people may think, 'Oh he's in a wheelchair, he's got a compromised lifestyle, poor guy.' Well I have an incredibly lifestyle I travel all of the time, I'm a film maker and I've done a lot, maybe more than some able-bodies sometimes, and I don't think people get that when they first see me."
The Carts of Darkness will be screened to the public at the Quest Library Nov. 28 starting at 3 p.m. A discussion session with Siple and director of photography, Christian Begin, follows at 4 p.m. Admission is free of charge.
Carts of Darkness can also be viewed for free online at www.nfb.ca.
