Film crew passes through Abilene for documentary
Apr. 25—Julie Roller Weeks didn't expect to see a Frenchman, a Frenchwoman and a former American with video equipment outside her office one Monday morning.
"It's not uncommon to encounter new faces or film crews downtown, but we were intrigued when we couldn't immediately identify their affiliation," said Weeks, the director for the Abilene Convention and Visitors Bureau. "Initially, I suspected they were in town for our recent USA TODAY Best Historic Small Town Contest. However, to our surprise, they were actually here to highlight our minimal light pollution."
Karim Goury, cinematographer; Priscille Desjonquères, director assistant; and Josh Shoemake, director, along with talent Adrian Dannatt are on a journey across the U.S. to document the people in the areas with the least amount of light pollution. They interviewed Weeks and the Reflector-Chronicle April 15 for their project.
"The yard where I grew up in, I would look up and see tons of stars, and now, you go to that backyard, you don't see any stars at all," Shoemake said. "It's just because of development. I was kind of curious about that and I was curious about this symbol of that, in a way, the fact that we're losing a connection with something bigger than ourselves, sort of social isolation, all of these things that are sort of patterns in our culture in America."
With the expertise of a geospatial engineer, Shoemake came up with a route that had the least amount of cumulative light pollution and had to be from coast to coast. The route began in Jekyll Island, Georgia, and will end just north of Orick, California. They drive mostly at night and visit the towns they happen to drive through.
"We're about halfway through," Shoemake said. "Realizing a month is not enough to do this. It's getting exhausting, but it's loads of fun."
Abilene just so happened to fall in that route. They were on day 16 of their journey when they came to Abilene.
"This (Abilene) is certainly, without being Kansas positive, it is certainly the most charming town, visually, that we've seen," he said.
The final product of the documentary is yet to be determined, Shoemake said. The name of the project is "The Darkest Line." He is hoping to have the project published before the general election Nov. 5.
Shoemake is a writer and teacher originally from Virginia. Virginia. After graduating university, he moved to Morocco to teach English. He ended up living in Morocco for about 15 years where he wrote books such as "Tangier: A Literacy Guide for Travelers" and his series "The Casablanca Quartet."
"I've lived abroad for almost 30 years, so it's a chance to rediscover my country, and I've been surprised in some ways," Shoemake said. "I've been surprised of the poverty of it, especially in the south. I've been surprised by the suffering of a lot of people. We keep meeting veterans, I guess that's normal on this path, a lot of real Republicans too, who are very much against war, against their experience in the military... The flip side of that is, people are incredibly friendly and incredibly welcoming, even in the worst circumstances, and seem generally filled with good will. It's this weird American contradiction in a way."
As for how Goury and Desjonquères became involved, Shoemake currently lives in France, and the production company Shoemake teamed up with is French.
"One of the things I've been trying to avoid is clichés," Shoemake said. "I was kind of tired of being at Paris dinner parties and people talking about what a wreck America is. Part of this is I want to show that it is not only a wreck. It's also some nice things."
To learn more about "The Darkest Line" go to www.joshshoemake.com/the-darkest-line.
