It’s a topic that is never far from our minds (or sight) in Manchester: homelessness.
Indeed it was only Sunday that I attended the play ‘Frozen Peas in an Old Tin Can’, about three rough sleepers – Review: Frozen Peas in an Old Tin Can (Greater Manchester Fringe) – raising both money and awareness of the issue.
I’m happy to learn and impart that another creative is using their platform to do the same.
Pavement is a modern-day parable about homelessness, from Manchester based writer/director, Jason Wingard, and featuring Steve Evets (Looking for Eric) and Liz White (Life on Mars), with filming taking place on location at the Manchester Metropolitan University Brooks Building.
After a decade of making award-winning short films and, most recently, two fantastic feature films, In Another Life and Eaten by Lions, Jason Wingard has been tempted back to making shorts with the creation of this new film about a homeless man sinking into the pavement.
The use of the word surreal to describe the film suggests this may be literally as well as perhaps metaphorically.
Whilst an initial injection of funding by The Uncertain Kingdom kick started the project, the challenge for Wingard and his crew is to make the film on a shoestring budget of £10,000 (£20,000 having been spent – the aim being to recoup back half), with all extra funds being donated to two Manchester charities Barakah Food Aid and The Mustard Tree.
Both organisations support local people in poverty and tackle the issues of homelessness.
Writer/Director, Wingard, says
This was an incredibly humbling experience and resorted our collective belief in human kindness. 320,000 people in Britain are now homeless and numbers keep rising. Our film tackles this dreadful statistic in a unique way.
You can help Wingard and Producer, Hannah Stevenson, smash their crowdfunding target and raise as much money as possible for these local charities by visiting the crowdfunding page in this link: www.indiegogo.com/projects/pavement
Further information about the charities below:
http://www.mustardtree.org.uk/
https://www.facebook.com/BarakahFoodAid/
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