DREAMCATCHER
UK, 2015, 104 minutes, Colour.
Brenda Myers- Powell.
Directed by Kim Longinotto.
Dreamcatcher is a documentary well worth seeing, to be recommended.
The focus of the film is a very strong personality, Brenda Myers- Powell, an underprivileged African- American woman, with a hard upbringing, very early in her life on the streets, brutalised by pimps, addicted to drugs. 25 years. At one stage she experienced violence and found herself in hospital. She made a decision to change her life.
This documentary has been made by Kim Longinotto, a British filmmaker who has won awards for her documentaries, including five from the Chicago International Film Festival from 1993 to 2001.. She is in an unobtrusive director, giving all the screen attention to Brenda and the many people that she meets.
The project was set up by writer Lisa Stevens who made a documentary Crackhouse USA in 2009 and met the co-founder of Dreamcatcher Foundation, Stephanie Daniels Wilson, along with Brenda Myers- Powell. She spent several years getting to know the women and observing their work and finally wrote a screenplay.
Brenda is the face of Dreamcatcher, relying on her exuberant personality, not afraid to be in a person’s face, with 25 years of a hard life to draw on to be persuasive in talking with young women who have become prostitutes or who are at risk. Touring the streets of Chicago meeting young women, talking with them, encouraging.
Brenda is married and has a daughter that is good family support. Brenda is the person she is, as observed with great sympathy. This is evident when she meets, for instance, schoolgirls, after school groups who are very frank, discussing the situations with them, warning them to be wary. An interesting character, Homer, a former pimp is now helping Brenda.
One focus is on Diana, who had been molested as a girl to a point where she thought this was okay and the totality of her life. She confides in Brenda who is able to open her eyes gradually to what life could be.
This Chicago is a world of streets, of prostitutes, bars and fast food outlets, sexism, racism, classism. Brenda, genially engages her director as well as the audience, wanting to contribute to the release of girls and women from their sex work.
