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Students and community members stood and applauded Tuesday night at the end of the official premiere of “Baptism in Damascus.”
The Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre hosted the showing of the non-profit documentary, which was filmed, directed and edited by UI student, Nate Dail.
Dail traveled to the streets of Washington D.C. and New York looking for homeless Americans to speak out about their often overlooked predicament.
The documentary focuses on the issue of domestic violence against the homeless for the sake of amusement.
According to the documentary, each year, the combined number of violent acts defined as “hate crimes” is less than half the number perpetrated against the homeless.
Since the 2002 release of the reality video series “Bumfights,” incidents of violence against the homeless have significantly risen around
the country.
The film points out that the true victims are the perpetrators, who have sacrificed their own “humanity” for the sake of personal entertainment.
“We can end so much of the hatred in this world if we learn to look at each other the same way that we do our brothers and sisters,” Dail said.
The non-profit independent production came from what Dail described as a “spiritual push.”
“I set out to make a documentary and I did that. I don’t need money for it,” Dail said. “We’re in such a good age right now where if people have the drive and the intuition to do it, they can go out there and make a film and get their voice heard.”
Dail began working on the film roughly a year and a half ago, after struggling with another movie project.
“He lived in a basement, sitting at a computer for a while,” Dail’s brother Galen, said.
Once Dail began working with the National Coalition for the Homeless in Washington, D.C., finding the footage and sources he needed was not difficult.
“I mostly found them on the streets, and I had to break through my own mental stereotypes,” Dail said. “We’re conditioned to think that they’re bad people, and I had that in the back of my mind whenever I went up. I found the complete opposite when I left, every single time.”
Dail started filming “Baptism in Damascus” almost immediately after the Kenworthy premiere of his first film, “Something Serious,” a dramatic fictional screenplay about a romantic relationship set in Moscow.
Dail was able to travel and shoot the entire documentary alone with a $50 budget and no technical assistance. Toward the end of the project, Galen Dail helped with the final stages of editing.
“Our whole life is a project, whether it’s a film or not,” Galen Dail said. “This is just a small part of it that you get to see and it’s nice that he can use his talent to put it out there like this.”
Dail is currently a junior at UI, studying English, which he someday hopes to teach at the high school level.
He said that he still dreams of continuously writing screenplays and documentaries on his own time.
“I speak from the heart, and from the heart we’re all the same,” Dail said. “We all want to love one another — we just don’t all take the time to do it. There’s no naturally bad person.”
For a future film opportunity, Dail said that he has become increasingly interested in the role of national governments in the systematic relocation and extermination of minority groups. He has not yet officially decided on this for his next topic.
“I’m just going to be patient and see what comes,” Dail said.
The video should be available to view on YouTube.com in the next few weeks, and Dail will be personally giving out free copies of the DVD to anyone who inquires.
“I’m making as many copies as I can,” Dail said. “When you delete money as a factor, you open so many doors.”
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