GREENSBORO – “Just Getting By,” a documentary film by award-winning Vermont filmmaker Bess O’Brien, was shown at Greensboro’s Highland Center for the Arts on Saturday, April 10, after the original April 4 date was canceled due to a heavy spring snowstorm.
The film follows Vermonters struggling with food and housing insecurity.
“It is a sweeping, and yet intimate look at the lives of Vermonters who are struggling with food and housing insecurity,” O’Brien writes of the problem. “Vermont has the second highest rate of homeless people in the United States, right after California. One third of Vermonters struggle to put food on the table. These are big issues for a small state.”
“Just Getting By” takes a close look at those issues in the lives of Vermonters who could easily be your neighbors.
It looks at the lives of working families, homeless people, those accessing food shelves and soup kitchens, some of whom are living in hotels and motels paid for with state housing programs.
Vermonters from different backgrounds are interviewed. The viewer hears from new Americans struggling with the rising cost of living, native people experimenting with new ways of farming and people who are providing services to their fellow Vermonters seeking help.
We see in the lives of the people being interviewed, the challenges they face every day and their ability to continue against odds that seem stacked against them.
We see the determination that low-income Vermonters wake up with to do what needs to be done every day.
At one point, I recall thinking, “This movie is going on longer than it needs to,” then, I realized that O’Brien masterfully brings the viewer into the lives of the people whose stories she’s sharing and gives us a visceral sense of what they face every day in their unending search to find meaning in lives that most of them don’t seem to see as hopeless in the way those of us on the outside might expect.
The film, produced by Kingdom County Productions, was shot during 2022-23 by director Bess O’Brien and cinematographer Patrick Kennedy.
“We wanted to capture the day to day lives of Vermonters who were living paycheck to paycheck and who were struggling to keep food on the table and a roof over their head. We also wanted to show the incredible resiliency [sic] and courage of folks who have very little and still manage to get up every day and strive for a better life.” O’Brien says.
O’Brien was joined by Brenda Siegel, 2022 Democratic candidate for Vermont Governor, and self-described “a low income single mom,” for a question-and-answer session after the film. The free-flowing discussion between the audience, O’Brien and Siegel about a difficult topic that the state of Vermont often doesn’t handle very well, was often emotional and gave additional context to the film from those working on the problem in their own ways.
“We hope by touring the film across the state that we can raise consciousness about these pressing issues of food and housing insecurity with Vermont audiences across the state.” Says O’Brien.
For more information go to www.kingdomcounty.org or email Bess at [email protected].
Paul Fixx is editor of The Hardwick Gazette and lives in Hardwick.
