Fill in the Blank
The name of their project says it all: Blank Street.
Like a couple of empty canvases, Ben Saunders and Joey Schihl, two film students at Virginia Commonwealth University, head out next week in a VW van named Iris to film the faces of poverty, and those overcoming hardship throughout Virginia. They are not entirely sure what they will find.
Over a 70 day period, the Blank Steet boys will work with the Virginia Interfaith Center to document the images and stories of our neighbors struggling to overcome the clutches of the economy, homelessness, and cycles of despair. We have no idea whether those on the margins will want to speak on-camera about their plight, but the Center is using a grant from the Consumer Alliance of Virginia to promote the project in the hopes that it will remind us all — including decision makers — that poverty in Virginia has a face; that poverty in Virginia has a story; and that poverty in Virginia, in many situations, also has causes and cures.
From May 31 – July 30, Ben and Joey will travel to communities to the north, south, east and west — possible including yours — driving their blue van in a bid to teach us how to peer deeply into communities where the hidden dangers of questionable public policy and poor decisions have become potholes on interstates of despair. Iris will be our lens as we track their odyssey through www.blankstreetproject.com
I love that name, Iris, because it suggests that we have so much to see if we just open our eyes and focus, even if just a little. Poverty is real, and even in a state like Virginia it is ever present in our neighborhoods — perhaps in some you don’t expect.
We hope and pray that Blank Street will help us all fill in the the colors of our canvas with the images and stories Ben and Joey — and Iris — bring to us. And perhaps through that we might also discover the common thread woven through the stories of us all and the larger truth which our founders knew so well: that we are indeed our brothers and sisters keeper, and that when we marry the means of those with, to the needs of those without we promote the general Welfare and truly secure the Blessings of Liberty.
Great work. Great inspiration. We need to have more people to get involve in this. Good Luck!