3rd Annual American Documentary Film Festival
Barrett Rudich has been a photographer, director and producer for over twenty-five years, for a wide range of companies and non-profit organizations including national brands such as Intel Corporation and the American Red Cross. But it was a serendipitous encounter on September 10th, 2011, that inspired his first feature documentary A Place of Truth. Barrett vividly recalls meeting street poet Abi Mott for the first time on a sidewalk outside Powell’s Bookstore in Portland, Oregon. Abi was sitting in a folded chair behind a vintage typewriter with a hand-made sign next to her that read: Name a Price. Pick a Subject. Get a poem. Intrigued, Barrett waited in line to get his own poem while a bystander explained how the process worked. When his turn came up, Barrett chose his favorite theme: Ambiguity. He paid a sum, and she began typing: “She was almost like in a trance, she gets in a rhythm, very focused into the moment, capturing the moment,” Barrett remembers. Once Barrett read the poem he was genuinely impressed, “Whoa! This is a really good poem.”
Abi Mott, who is originally from Lancaster, Pennsylvania was, “very nomadic when I met her,” Barrett recalls. She was a 20-year-old, who dropped out of high school, and was couch-surfing in Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco. Abi randomly came across Lynn Gentry, a street poet, while going around and passing out resumes to coffee shops. When Abi took an interest in what Lynn was doing, he encouraged Abi to try poetry busking herself and lent her a typewriter. Although Abi learned how to busk in less than a month, she had been writing poetry since the age of 17 and writing in general as far back as 11. “She’s a voracious reader,” Barrett said. When it comes to poets she is a big fan of Ginsberg and Anne Sexton. What appealed to Barrett about street poetry as a documentary subject is that, “I like the purity of it, all very immediate, it’s very cinematic.”
That night they parted ways, but Barrett’s idea for a documentary was already taking shape. “I had the feeling from the beginning that I wanted it to be a road movie,” Barrett envisioned. Three months later, Barrett assembled a small crew and began filming Abi and her supporting cast of characters in Lancaster, New York City and New Orleans. Barrett and his crew shot over 20 hours of footage. “When I woke up every day, I was so eager to go out and shoot,” Barrett said..
Two years later when A Place of Truth was complete, Barrett presented the film to Abi. “She was very emotional,” Barrett described. “She looked at me and said, ‘this is so beautiful.’” A Place of Truth premiered November 13th 2013, at the Mt. Hood Independent Film Festival in Hood River, Oregon.
Abi Mott’s story continues to make an impact. While traveling with the festival tours, A Place of Truth was shown in the Monterey International Film Festival as part of a program sponsored by the US Consulate Office that reached out to at-risk young people from the community. These teenagers stated they were genuinely inspired by the film and by Abi’s Q&A session to pursue their own dreams. Abi, in turn, was very moved to have made a very real difference in their lives.
DIRECTOR: BARRETT RUDICH
WEB: APLACEOFTRUTH.COM
INSTAGRAM: ABIMOTT