The Street: A Film with the Homeless

Every day, on the streets of Canada's cities, we pass them on our way to work or school. Bums, beggars, winos, bag people we call them. But who is the person at the end of that outstretched arm? What is life on the street really like? Is there a way off the street? For six years, director Daniel Cross followed the lives of brothers Danny and John Claven and Frank O'Malley--three homeless men who spent much of their time in and around a Montreal subway station. Cross became intimately involved with the three men's lives, chronicling the evolution of their years on the street, and their cycles of addiction and recovery, hope and despair. Filmed in a cinema verité style, The Street: A Film With the Homeless is unique: it humanizes the homeless, breaking down the barrier between us and them, neither moralizing nor offering easy answers. The winner of a Special Jury Award for Documentaries at the Vancouver International Film Festival in 1996 and the People's Choice Award at the 1997 Canadian International Documentary Film Awards in Toronto, this is a gritty, compelling look at life on the streets that moves beyond the media stereotypes to show both the humanity of the homeless and the street-toughened aspects of their existence.