Life and Death in Dirty Dave’s Homeless Camp

Filmmaker Michael Arth Spent Years Documenting the Drama of

A Homeless Camp in the Woods of Florida

200px-Michael_E._Arth_5-21-09His film, “Out of the Woods” is an engrossing study of the folks who live in a camp in the Florida woods.  Some are drunks, fighting the demons created by alcohol; some are dopers, others just out of work or homeless with no place to lay their head at night.  Dirty Dave Grimsly, who weirdly has a slight resemblance to George Bush (the Junior one), takes them all in.  He feeds them, cooks meals, gives them a tent or a sleeping bag, and tends to them.  Because of their emotional and physical situations, the people who live in the camp provide us with dramatic statements of the personal horrors and the angst they are going through.  Michael Arth is to be honored for this timeless study of those who need a helping hand, but find that the there is none from the local government.  For those poor folks, the last stop is a tent deep in the woods, in a camp run by a good natured alcoholic nick-named Dirty Dave.  And if there is an unlikely saint in this film, it is Dave.  Every day he lives through his own hell of being a drunk and an ex-con sent to prison for manslaughter  But it is Dave who gives his love and attention to a squad of lost souls who occupy the camp. It will probably be a long time before you forget some of these characters and their sad and tragic lives.  Filmmaker.Arth holds up a backwards-looking mirror in which you not only see them in the present, but you see them as children, growing up, handsome and beautiful, ready to jump into the American dream.  The juxtaposition of their youthful years, so hopeful and full of life, with the shocking reality of their hopeless descent into the swirling hell that lies beneath the surface of our society, is a major achievement by Mr. Arth.

Mr. Arth made this film in part to promote the construction of a project called Tiger Bay Village, to give a last chance to homeless folks in the area, a place to detox and recover their health, as well as living quarters so they can recover their personal dignity. Michael Arth has been working for years to push through this project, which is still stalled by the local government.  The pathetic, actually enraging and ironic slap in the face to the American people, is that when our own folks need this kind of help it is not to be found, and our own government, year after year dumps millions of people into the U.S. as “refugees” or for “political asylum”.  As this is syrian_refugeeswritten, your tax paid mentally ill rulers at the Department of State are planning on bringing one and a half million refugees from Syria into the country.  What for?  We don’t need them or want them.  We have our own to take care of.  Every war that the CIA loses becomes another humanity dump of millions more into our decaying cities.  With the jobs sent to China, and the banksters pushing millions of families from their homes into the streets, the homeless population is increasing at a rapid pace. Tell Washington to STOP NOW.  Get out of these foreign countries, and please, no more refugees until the American born homeless are taken care of, and that includes our Veterans, 800,000 of whom have been waiting for years for their benefits. The smells in homeless encampments are nothing compared to the stink from the politicians in Washington, D.C., the world’s biggest sewage pit masquerading as a city. Those politicians are not fit to kiss the feet of a guy like Dirty Dave Grimsley.

Watch the film below, or find it directly on youtube:  Out of the Woods

Contact the filmmaker Michael Arth at www.goldenapplesmedia.com

Check out the Tiger Bay Village site at www.villagesforthehomeless.org

 

One thought on “Life and Death in Dirty Dave’s Homeless Camp”

  1. Wow. Cool flick. Whenever you think life’s taken a dump on you, watch this video and get back on track real quick. At least most of us have some kind of roof over our head. These folks don’t even have a frickin’ pot to pee in. Hope all you rich yuppies are watching real good, ’cause this is a lot of you in a year or two. Nothing lasts forever…..

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