The city produced, funded and provided edits on a documentary with a local marketing firm to show the ecosystem of homelessness care.
By Stefania Lugli/The Journal
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect a correction and clarifications.
‘Hope in the Heartland,’ a city-produced documentary examining the challenges and triumphs of navigating homelessness in Wichita, premiered Thursday night to a crowd of at least 250 people during the Tallgrass Film Festival.
Audience members were clapping, gasping and sniffling throughout the 110-minute film, which interviewed elected officials, service providers, people who were formerly homeless and people currently experiencing homelessness. The film also featured two city housing case managers working to secure housing for 22-year-old Caitlin, who had been homeless for four years at the start of filming.
Angeline Johnson, the grant coordinator for Project HOPE, a city initiative funded by a $1 million Department of Justice grant, and a producer of the film, said the documentary was born out of a group desire to lead an education campaign that focused on the lived experience of homelessness and debunking myths.
“It’s not about making the city look perfect. They’re not. We all know that. It’s not about making the providers look perfect. They’re not. We recognize that,” Johnson said.
“However, there are sincere efforts to truly do right by the community through these respective spaces. In this role, I could just hone in on and advance the work to educate and inform the community on what’s happening, and how the community can be mobilized to make a real difference.”
The documentary, as producers and service providers said during a meeting following the premiere, should be considered “incomplete” as the film can only include so much of the congested, complicated ecosystem of homelessness.
Caitlin, the young homeless woman featured in the film, was seen in a final shot curled on the floor with her dog, Babygirl, newly settled into her first apartment as an adult. What didn’t make it to the Tallgrass cut was that Caitlin has lost her housing since then – two months after her last scene.
“I think it’s pretty important to show that Caitlin lost housing,” Ryan Gates, president and CEO of PANO Marketing, the marketing firm producing the film, said at the meeting. “I think that’s got to happen because that’s the reality of it.”
City of Wichita cut footage from film, says producer
The Tallgrass premiere was followed by a community feedback meeting the following morning, held at Evergy’s 111 Ellis St. office, attended by service providers and representatives of the city’s housing department.
Gates, who also serves as the film’s executive producer, and Johnson, the Project HOPE grant coordinator, led the meeting, asking for feedback and offering insight into the makings of the film.
Despite himself and Johnson being hired contractors, Gates said that the city owns all 100 hours of footage (Sally Stang, the city’s director of housing, is also a producer). Gates and his production team delivered drafts of the film for review by the city’s law and public relations departments for approval.
“We are also beholden to the city of Wichita. There are things in the film that were cut, and there are things in the film that had to be added based on the feedback from the legal department and the PR department,” he said.
“Is this exactly the documentary I would have presented if I was just doing this as Ryan Gates? No. There are some really great moments that we love that got pulled out. But it might make city officials not look great. So we got to play that game too.”
When asked by an attendee for elaboration, Gates added that “a lot” got taken out involving Wichita Police Officer Nate Schwiethale, a member of the Homeless Outreach Team. He did not further elaborate as to why after a Journal reporter declined Gates’ request to go off the record.
After a version of this story published, he shared that the footage involved a “lovely” moment with Caitlin that surfaced details related to her interactions with a state agency that had to be removed for clarity.
Johnson said she appreciated working alongside PANO producers as she felt that the telling was not about a “singular savior narrative” of the city.
“We captured some different perspectives and different lenses while still honoring the request to get more engagement and feedback from members of council, and, again, getting feedback from different aspects of the community,” she said. “It was an exercise of balance that also puts a flashlight to the good work and efforts being done.”
During a feedback session to inform future edits, participants suggested providing more screen time for longer-term, collaborative outreach efforts involving other providers. Much of the film emphasized the city’s roles in dealing with homelessness – including an interview from every city council member.
“It did not speak to the collaboration that takes place in our community and will continue,” said Matt Lowe, community impact manager at United Way, who gave one of the interviews that didn’t make the final Tallgrass cut.
‘Heartland’ part of grant-funded education campaign
Johnson said Project HOPE’s leadership campaign decided to focus its education campaign on telling the stories of people with lived experience, meaning those currently and formerly homeless, in an effort to dispel myths about homelessness. The council worked in conjunction with the Homelessness Task Force and Development Strategies, who led allocation planning efforts with the city’s housing-related ARPA funds. The documentary cost $60,000 to make, according to Gates. The overall budget Project Hope’s education campaign came to $79,000, with $15,000 came from city ARPA funds while the rest came from Project HOPE.
Johnson said it took a couple years for the leadership council to settle on its education campaign plan, saying they considered sticking posters up in the downtown area, making video snippets to service providers or sending content to churches. A 2023 record between the city and Development Strategies showed that the entities initially contracted to produce four 10-15 minute documentary-style videos for social media and “community locations.”
Once a video production was ultimately chosen, leadership briefly considered doing an episode series on the city’s YouTube page before Project HOPE and PANO went the film festival route. Robert Thomas, the program coordinator of filmmaking at Wichita State University’s Shocker Studios, directed the film. He said that the entire film crew was made up of current and former Shocker Studios students.
“The opportunity to connect with Tallgrass, which is something that’s very Wichita, to connect with something that’s homegrown to share this real story… Why not use Tallgrass as the kickoff?” she said.
Johnson emphasized that the Tallgrass premiere is not the film’s final version, as production is still ongoing (the premiere and the community feedback session were being filmed). It’s yet to be determined what ongoing and past footage could be used for, but there is one certainty: Project HOPE will make the final documentary available for free viewing in early 2025.
The next steps for the film and its production is to collect feedback from Tallgrass viewers for “adjustments to storylines or perspectives,” which can range anywhere from a request to include more perspective from local business owners or an ask to focus more on one aspect of policy over the other.
“We’re trying to understand what’s going to be the most valuable direction to go as we get to this finalized point,” Johnson said, suggesting that the next edit include Caitlin’s case managers discussing why she lost her housing and the difficult reality of getting someone stably housed.
Interested parties can rent ‘Hope in the Heartland’ on Tallgrass’ website. Link here.
Correction and clarifications: A previous version of this story incorrectly identified the director of “Hope in the Heartland.” The director and director of photography is Robert Thomas, who also serves as program coordinator of filmmaking and associate director of Wichita State University’s School of Digital Arts.
In addition, The Journal wishes to clarify two other matters:
- The documentary itself cost $60,000, according to Ryan Gates, the film’s executive producer. The $79,000 figure used in the story encompasses the entire education budget for Project Hope.
- A link to provide feedback on the film is intended for viewers only and has been removed.
Finally, we also added context to the section of the story that discusses the removal of footage from the documentary. The changes provide details about a moment of footage that was removed and clarify that a suggestion to provide more screen time for longer-term, collaborative outreach efforts came during a feedback session to inform future edits.
The story has been updated to reflect these changes.
This article was republished here with the permission of: KLC Journal