'she Was 15 And The Blood Was Pouring From Her Face'

Sun Herald

Sunday April 6, 2008

Erin O'Dwyer

Sascha Ettinger-Epstein failed at rebellion but found a cause in the homeless. ERIN O'DWYER meets a filmmaker still nursing the wounds.

You usually know where you are with a film from Sascha Ettinger-Epstein. In the underbelly of the city, among the desperate or demented, shooting up heroin or knocking back liquor.

"I want to make a film about flowers next," says the visibly exhausted 30-year-old filmmaker.

"I need to revise how I work. My life gets consumed by the process. It always happens. It adds to the passion of my work but it detracts from your life."

Ettinger-Epstein has just emerged from two years filming homeless youth at the Salvation Army's Oasis shelter in Darlinghurst. The gritty doco, which features Salvation Army Captain Paul Moulds and the young people he works with, screens on ABC TV this week.

Ettinger-Epstein initially agreed to spend three days a week at the shelter. Instead she found herself moving into the suburb and spending seven days - and nights - there.

"My terrace house was almost like one of the squats," she says. "It was a great house but it was falling down."

When the film went into post-production, she moved to a "posher suburb". Yet her phone never stops ringing - "I have lots of homies" - and she has just spent the weekend in the hospital, maintaining a bedside vigil for a dying friend.

"You are about to receive a call from an inmate at John Moroney Correctional Centre, will you accept this call," she mimics, rejecting yet another call.

It's a far cry from the affluent existence that Ettinger-Epstein was born into. The daughter of Austrian immigrants, Ettinger-Epstein grew up in Sydney's eastern suburbs and went to a private school.

"I have been lavished with love by my parents," she says. "I have tried endlessly to rebel and they always supported me. I died my hair 50 different colours, had safety pins through my face and ears, and for my 18th birthday they bought me a black cake with the word anarchy on it."

Then she adds with a moan: "I was never able to rebel properly."

These days, there is no hint of the rebel-without-a-cause about Ettinger-Epstein. Instead she is a passionate advocate for those without opportunity. The documentary's release coincides with the first national inquiry into youth homelessness in 20 years, headed by Major David Eldridge from the Salvation Army, and a green paper on homelessness commissioned by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. Ettinger-Epstein hopes her film will show policymakers that all is not lost for kids on the street.

"Some of these kids have gone off the rails but they are salvageable," she says. "It's frustrating to watch because they do have choices, to choose a better life for themselves, but they can't be bothered because they are depressed and they don't see themselves as worthy of seeking out an opportunity."

The pint-sized blonde might have established herself as a guerilla filmmaker but she is no lightweight. She studied communications at the University of Technology, Sydney, gaining first-class honours for a series of feature stories on "underbelly Sydney". Her field work took her to Darlinghurst's notorious pick-up "the wall", the now-defunct Wildcats transvestite cafe on Oxford Street, and the Matthew Talbot refuge in Woolloomooloo. It was at Matthew Talbot that she met Peter Darren Moyle - the destitute photographer who would become the subject of her first film.

"I was hanging out with a cask of wine really early in the morning and I met this guy," recalls Ettinger-Epstein. "He was ranting and raving and he looked like a typical hobo. He said he was a photographer of the area and I thought 'oh yeah'. But he had this old camera, a 1936 Rolliecord medium format, which is like a relic, and he said come back to my place, I'll show you my photos."

In a moment of madness, Ettinger-Epstein agreed. But it was an inspired meeting. In Moyle's housing commission flat, strewn across the floor, were piles of beautiful hand-printed black and white photographs. Among them were images of a transsexual stripping and a drug deal going down at the city's annual fun-run, City to Surf.

"He was a brilliant artist and all his images were amazing," says Ettinger-Epstein. "He was the first character I met who I thought this is not two-dimensional. I can't capture this in words and pictures, I have to make film because he's larger than life."

Ettinger-Epstein had never made a film before. She didn't let that stop her. She called a friend who was making wedding videos and another friend whose cousin was working in film production. Then she applied - successfully - to the young filmmakers' fund and SBS Television.

"Suddenly we had a budget and a presale to television. I think we had $70,000 in the end. And I had never even made a film!"

The roughly shot, hand-held film Painting With Light In A Dark World screened to international acclaim in 2003. It sealed Ettinger-Epstein's fate as a filmmaker and won a raft of awards, including best short documentary at the San Francisco International Film Festival, an AFI for best documentary direction, an IF Award, and a Dendy award.

It was also the beginning of a firm friendship with Moyle.

But while Ettinger-Epstein embraced new opportunities - among them entry to the masters program in documentary direction at the Australian Film Radio and Television School - Moyle's newfound fame burned fast and furious.

"No one knew about him before the film and afterwards (Rolling Stones guitarist) Keith Richards wanted to have an exhibition for him," says Ettinger-Epstein. "But his lifestyle was what gave him access to what he was photographing and it killed him in the end. It's a world of drugs, chaos and violence and that's what swallowed him up."

Moyle died in March 2005. Ettinger-Epstein still struggles to accept it. "He was a visionary and a raconteur," she says. "I've never believed in anyone so much or loved anyone so deeply. I tried to bust him out of all that but any opportunity he got he just sabotaged."

During the making of both films, Ettinger-Epstein has pondered her role as a filmmaker. Is she an objective observer or has she crossed the line? She has given much thought to the story of Kevin Carter, the South African photographer whose image of a starving Sudanese toddler stalked by a vulture won him a Pulitzer Prize. He was criticised for not saving the girl and committed suicide three months later.

"I didn't film a lot of things because of the ethics of it," she says of her time at the Oasis. "I thought, I film or do I jump in? The first time I saw a bashing, I was completely cowardly. I didn't film it and I didn't jump in. I did nothing. I just watched, which was completely disturbing. She was only 15 and the blood started pouring out of her face."

Not surprising then that Ettinger-Epstein wants to expand her subject matter. In her private moments, she has begun considering children and a white picket fence.

"I think I am getting a little weary of climbing over barbed-wired fences," she says with a laugh. "My personal life has taken a back seat because it's very confronting and hard for people to understand the weird hours and the fact that you are always available.

"People don't want perpetual trauma and stress, which is what you experience. But you can't live like that. It's not good for your health."

The Oasis: Australia's Homeless Youth screens on ABC TV at 8.30pm on Thursday.

© 2008 Sun Herald

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