Social Isolation

FILMMAKERS ON A MISSION TO INFORM UN-HOUSED PEOPLE ABOUT COVID-19

BY JOE NOLAN, FILM CRITIC

Filmmaker Eric Moseley raised his daughter on the streets — the pair lived together without a regular home in cities across the country. Moseley and his now adult daughter were both housed on the West Coast — Eric lives in Los Angeles, and Erica lives in San Francisco — when the COVID-19 pandemic broke last March. As news about the frightening new disease broke, and Europe shutdown, and reports started to warn that the illness and quarantines were coming to America, Eric’s first thoughts were with the massive homeless population in California.

Eric and Erica’s experiences surviving on the streets informed their understanding that Californians without homes are also out of the loop for crucial information regarding the deadly disease that has engulfed their state. Those experiences also inform this film with a unique perspective that yields revelations about what the California housing crisis looks like from inside a raging pandemic.

“The Homeless Coronavirus Outreach” is the utilitarian title of a new short documentary the Moseleys created to make a record of their efforts to warn and educate their homeless neighbors about the threat of COVID-19. The movie is available on Eric Moseley’s YouTube channel and it’s played in various settings around the country including NECAT cable access television right here in Nashville where Eric and Erica used to live on the streets. The documentary offers lots of raw video footage shot from one point of view with what is likely a phone camera. The titles at the beginning are the kind you’d find in any basic video editing software or platform.

This would be only ambitious amateur filmmaking if not for the Moseley’s mission to distribute supplies and information to Californians without housing. The Moseley’s understanding of their subjects, and their pure recording of these people’s vulnerable lives illuminates the mental illness, drug dependency, illiteracy and social isolation that conspire to keep people without houses from understanding the invisible siege the pandemic has brought to our entire society. Documentary films are often about discovering a place or a person alongside a curious filmmaker who is searching for answers. Eric Moseley inverts that formula: in “The Homeless Coronavirus Outreach” he and his daughter are providing the answers.

In this film the amateur camerawork, lighting and sound become mostly immaterial as the Moseley’s capture the antitheses of the stay-at-home experience many of us associate with these plagued days. Moseley’s movie also comes with an inspired hiphop soundtrack featuring songs from Eastside Tiggy, and the music montage sequences inspire some truly creative editing featuring frames in slow motion and speeded-up alongside repeating jump cuts that help to blend sequences together.

The Moseley’s and their movie take viewers on a trip from the streets of San Francisco to Los Angeles’ Skid Row – the Central City East neighborhood that’s been known around the world for its large concentrations of unhoused people since the Great Depression. Los Angeles is home to a Hooverville in the 21st century and Skid Row has become a synonym for living on the streets anywhere in the world. Skid Row was a hobo haunt in the 1930s and a haven for hippie dropouts and Vietnam vets in the 1960s and 1970s. Nearly 5000 people still call the neighborhood home, and part of the Moseley’s mission is to get their neighbors without homes to register for the census in order to fund the kinds of programs that can serve them and their Skid Row neighbors. The homeless populations in both San Francisco and Los Angeles are emblematic of California’s corrupt politics, cruel policing, titanic wealth disparities and lack of affordable housing.

But the fact that the Moseleys have found a national audience for their homemade film tells you that this story is a familiar one in cities across the country, including right here in Nashville.

Follow Eric Moseley’s YouTube Channel and watch The Homeless Coronavirus Outreach today \ https://www.youtube.com/channel/ UCihvYr_x4VJP_U5YR2_QSfA

Joe Nolan is a critic, columnist and performing singer/songwriter based in East Nashville. Find out more about his projects at www.joenolan.com.