The Hobo Film Festival
The railroad industry in America has played an immense role in the development and progression of our modern society. Besides its most obvious role as a life line for supplies and sustenance to newly burgeoning towns and industry, it helped spawn an incredible subculture of people, the hobos and tramps of America. These hobos used the trains during the great depression in order to seek work, and a whole society of people grew around the railroads.
Agency Films has long been associated with the railways and has produced multiple short films and television programming around the subject of train hopping and have made it their mission to preserve the history of the American train tramp. We have generated national interest due to our increasingly popular television shows, You Tube broadcasts, and the yearly Asheville Rejects Film Festival.
Agency Films is due to kick off the Canadian leg of their Hobo Film Festival May 2009 and will embark on a international tour culminating in Los Angeles, CA. They have brought together dozens of filmmakers who produce films around train hopping and hobo culture and are gathering even more submissions to create the ultimate visual dichotomy of this colorful and truly important facet of American history.
The tour starts in Vermont and has over 12 stops along the route, including Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Ann Arbor, Milwaukee, Duluth, Winnipeg, Calgary, Vancouver and L.A.
We are searching for participating venues and street team volunteers. We at Agency Films hope that our mission has resonated with you, and that you take interest in this epic journey, a visual ride into the depths of this fading culture of tramps and trains. If any of theses dates can be scheduled, we hope that your venue would be willing to participate. To find out more about Agency films and the media we create, we suggest that you view some of our content and get more familiarized with what we do.
You can find out more by visiting Agency Films at:
- www.theagentheadquarters.com
- www.youtube.com/agencyfilms
- www.rejectsfilmfest.com
- www.myspace.com/agencyfilms
- www.myspace.com/panamericanartsadventure
You may also contact us by mail: tramptravels@yahoo.com
A SAMPLE OF THE FILMS APPEARING AT THE HOBO FILM FESTIVAL
- HOBO- john t davis
- ROAD TO COLOSSUS- erik burke
- RIDING THE RAILS- michael uys and lexy lovell
- ERWIN RIDE- agency films
- TRUE HIGHWAYS- daniel cieplinski
- THE GREAT AMERICAN HOBO- bobb hopkins
- WHO IS BOZO TEXINO- bill daniel
- MEXICO TOUR- alexei
- SLACK ACTION- shana lawton
- A DAY IN THE LIFE- agency films
- TRAIN SLIDE- espee inc.
- TRAIN RIDES- melinda fries
- CROW DOG- vanessa renwick
- SPRUCE PINE TO BOSTIC- agency films
- RIDING THE RAILS- prime time live
- FRUITLOOP AND ARWEIGIAN RICK- jeffery shroyer
- CRYSTAL CHANDELIERS AND BURGUNDY- johnny cash
- MILWAUKEE TO PORTAGE- stacy barton
- TWO GUYS- agency films
- CP RAIL KANADA- raphael lyon
- EMPEROR OF THE NORTH- robert aldrich
- CATCHING OUT- sara george
- COMING HOME- tyler mohler
- COMPASS IN THE BLOOD- national hobo association
- LAUNDRY TRAIN- agency films
- BOXCAR BERTHA- roger corman
- LISTERINE ON SUNDAYS- brian paul higgins
Hobo Film Festival Review by Alli Marshall, The Mountain Express, 07/06/2007
As the opening scenes of train hoppers and tramps cross the screen, an assemblage of images culled from the many films that make up the Hobo Film Festival, I can’t help wondering how many of the black-clad, tattooed punks claiming the theater’s front rows have climbed into moving boxcars themselves. And then the film festival’s organizers make a brief introduction, asking the very question I was just mulling over, and at least half the audience lets out shouts of approval.
Though it’s doubtful I’ll ever hop a train (I’ve purchased tickets for many, and have read my share of railway travel adventure books, but in this venue that hardly earns me any credibility), just attending the Hobo Film Festival is a bit of a journey. Created by Burnsville, N.C.-based Agency Films, the collection of shorts and feature-length films all share the common thread of relating to rail roads and the people who traverse them. For free. And against the law. And often at risk of physical or legal peril.
“The railroad industry in America has played an immense role in the development and progression of our modern society,” states the independent film company’s web site. “Besides its most obvious role as a life line for supplies and sustenance to newly burgeoning towns and industry, it helped spawn an incredible subculture of people, the hobos and tramps of America. These hobos used the trains during the great depression in order to seek work, and a whole society of people grew around the railroads.”
The films in the traveling festival address these romantic hobos of days past: Roger Corman’s Boxcar Bertha deals with one of history’s most famous female tramps. But a significant portion of the imagery captured, often on cheap cameras and by amateur film makers, is of modern-day ramblers eschewing cultural values of money, status and excess in favor of material and philosophical freedom.
Sarah George’s feature film, Catching Out follows the lives of a handful of punks and self-proclaimed tramps. Some ride the rails obsessively, some hop trains occasionally and others ultimately leave the life behind. Traveler Lee states, “It’s one of the few genuinely American things, like jazz and having sex in cars.” Footage of Lee also reveals a subculture of DIY types living in rustic camps or inner-city squats and making due without jobs, cars or bank accounts.
“It’s easy to survive without the keys to a house,” Jessica, a member of the traveling punk community, notes.
George’s film, while long-winded at points, boasts gorgeous scenery, a lush score and professional polish. Other films, like four minute short Milwaukee to Portage are as gritty and rough-hewn as the travelers they document· Raphael Lyon’s CP Rail Kanada juxtaposes silent black and white footage with journal-style stream-of-consciousness voice over for a movie that comes off as dreamlike and simultaneously jarring. “I never liked hitchhiking,” he admits during his monologue. “It seems so inefficient.”
The festival’s collective films seem to draw a similar conclusion: Rail riding is a viable means of transportation. But no one, seeing the images and hearing the stories, could come away assuming hoboing was as simple as getting from point A to point B without anting up for a ticket. It’s a way of life, not for the faint of heart or those adverse to a little grime.
What the festival does offer is a rare look into a subculture that Agency Films organizers claim is not much longer for this world. Stepped up security measures, increased police attention, heat monitors in railway yards and enclosed boxcars make freight hopping more difficult each year. Still, hobo culture does endure, as witnessed by the annual Hobo Convention held in Britt, Ia. every year since 1933.
Like the subjects it depicts, the Hobo Film Festival travels the country this summer, winding up in Iowa for the August 9-12 the Hobo Convention. “Agency films has long been associated with the railways and has ... made it their mission to preserve the history of the American train tramp,” explains press for the festival.
Showings are rather rough around the edges and run throughout the evening. Expect a few technical difficulties and plan to come and go during the multiple hours-worth of material. And, while viewers may not come away raring to hop on the next train, this festival is sure to touch the heart of any traveler.
For those who missed the Hobo Film Festival’s debut last night, catch the Films and Rock fundraiser tonight (Friday, July 6) at the New French Bar Courtyard & Cafe (12 Biltmore Ave., Asheville, 225-6445). See five films, hear five bands including Serpents, Chops, Dig Shovel Dig, On the Take and Mister Mean with DJ Joe Flash. 9 p.m., $5.
—Alli Marshall, A&E reporter
The University Daily Kansan:
The train has long been a means of transportation for people, and not just the ticket-buying passengers of Amtrak. A whole culture of freight-train hoppers that took off during the Great Depression still exists today, according to a documentary film festival that took place at the Replay Lounge on July 16.
A mixture of full-length feature films and YouTube shorts that made up the Hobo Film Festival told the stories of those who hitched free rides on freight trains across the country.
Shawn Lukitsch, owner of the small film production company that produced some of the films and organized the festival, said he had been riding freight trains since 1994. He said he thought that train riding was the last remaining form of “red-blooded American adventure.”
“I really cannot explain what it’s like to be out there,” he said. “If you want a kick in the ass, this is it.”
About 30 people sat inside the bar, located at 946 Massachusetts St., to get a glimpse at the rarely-seen side of the railroads.
One movie told of the camaraderie between the hobos, who were defined as traveling workers. Tramps were defined as traveling non-workers, and bums as non-traveling non-workers. The film also explained that the rails provided hobos with a forum to get together and tell their tales.
Lukitsch said that the hobo culture was dying, and the film festival was an attempt to preserve its legacy.
“We want to make it a point that it’s not something that’s going to be around for long,” he said.
Alyssa Montoya, a Lawrence resident who called herself a “traveler,” said the world of train riding is a well-kept secret.
“A lot more people are traveling for free and no one knows it,” she said.
Lukitsch said that the hobo culture consisted of people from all walks of life who were in search of adventure. He said he’s met a wide variety of people on the train, including neurosurgeons and psychologists. He added that the term “hobo” shouldn’t carry a negative connotation.
“They’re not scumbags, they’re professionals,” Lukitsch said.
One movie contained interviews with former hobos sharing their stories about life on the rails. The hobos strummed guitars and sang songs while others described the “hobo stew” that was commonly eaten.
At least one audience member didn’t think the films accurately portrayed hobo life.
“A lot of it is romanticized,” said Manny Manzani, a Lawrence resident. “It’s a lot about good times. Being a hobo isn’t just about good times.”
The Hobo Film Festival tour began in Asheville, N.C., earlier this month and will make more than 20 stops across the country before ending at the National Hobo Convention in Britt, Iowa.
WEB REVIEW BY: www.timboucher.com
Last night I accidentally wound up at the Baltimore screening of the Hobo Film Festival, which took place in the cleanest punk house I ever saw’s basement. And they had this really sweet amazing white dog. Cute young girls were sipping forties of malt liquor and we watched a couple films, one feature length, about people riding freight trains (illegally) for pleasure and as a lifestyle. The tour is being put on and the films hosted by a guy named Shawn from Asheville I think, who collected money for gas in a shoebox. The whole event was really fun, even if it did end up making feel sort of lonesome - but I guess that’s just part of the lifestyle.
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The New York Times Article
Train-Hopping Traveler’s Life, Captured on Film
By COLIN MOYNIHAN
Published: May 18, 2008
For nearly as long as rail lines have crisscrossed the country, there have been stories about wanderers covertly climbing aboard train cars and riding away from problems or speeding toward some glimmering promise on the horizon.
The paths of train hoppers, tramps, hobos and travelers, looking for work, adventure or merely free transportation, have been recorded in lyrics and in literature. Jack Kerouac, Jack London and John Steinbeck have written about them. They have populated the songs of Merle Haggard and Woody Guthrie.
More recently, filmmakers have documented the experience of riding the rails across the country’s varied terrain. And some of those works were recently screened in a storefront community center in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, as part of a traveling cinematic exhibition called the Hobo Film Festival, which is progressing from state to state by way of a $200 Toyota station wagon driven by a 31-year-old train hopper from Asheville, N.C., named Shawn Lukitsch.
On Wednesday night, Mr. Lukitsch stood on Tompkins Avenue outside the center, the 123 Community Space, where the films were to be shown. Tattoos of train tracks circled his right wrist, and he puffed on a small pipe as he described the appeal of viewing the landscape from inside an empty boxcar.
“It is pure, unadulterated, unhomogenized America,” he said. “You see everything from the seediest underbelly of industrial areas to rural places to people’s backyards with laundry hanging on a line.”
Mr. Lukitsch said that he began riding trains 14 years ago, while living in Milwaukee, and that he had logged about 120,000 miles through the 48 contiguous states as well as parts of Canada and Mexico. He has ridden on rail lines belonging to companies like Union Pacific, Southern Pacific, Norfolk Southern and Burlington Northern.
He has traveled in the relative comfort of boxcars and grain cars and has tolerated travel in coal cars, which are considered undesirable because they are dirty and have high sides that afford a poor view.
While riding, he has fended off an occasional threat from fellow travelers, he said, and once abruptly exited a grain car standing in a train yard after he encountered a large possum holed up inside.
On two occasions — in Greensboro, N.C., and Wichita, Kan. — Mr. Lukitsch said he was jailed briefly for trespassing. Still, he said, some people who work in train yards or aboard trains are friendly to the travelers even though the practice of hopping trains is clearly unlawful.
Eventually he began using a video camera to document his trips, and he edited the segments into narratives.
Last summer, he said, he showed his and others’ movies at the National Hobo Convention, a rambunctious rendezvous that has been held annually in Britt, Iowa, since 1900.
And last month Mr. Lukitsch set out on a two-month trip in the station wagon with about 30 documentary films on hobo life — shorts, trailers and features — that he is showing in 23 towns and cities.
The origins of unsanctioned train travel are unclear, but many agree that the early days of the 20th century were a golden era for the men and women who used empty freight cars as a way to get from one place to the next.
Among those thought to have ridden the trains during that time are Jack Dempsey, Eugene O’Neill and William O. Douglas, who later served for 36 years as a justice of the United States Supreme Court.
Storied travelers in more recent times have included figures with names like the Flying Dutchman, Mojave Don and Cold Beer Butch.
Strictly speaking, Mr. Lukitsch said, the term hobo refers to someone riding a train while searching for work, while people motivated mainly by wanderlust or adventure are generally described as tramps. Those who refer to themselves as travelers are often younger riders driven by a desire to escape what they view as the commercial aspects of mainstream culture.
Mr. Lukitsch said part of his motivation in making films was a desire to document a form of transport that was becoming more limited and difficult in a security-conscious era.
“Freight train riding is dying,” he said.
Inside the storefront on Wednesday the lights were dimmed and the audience passed around metal cooking pots of popcorn as they watched a series of short films and trailers. The soundtrack was the rhythmic rumble of steel wheels on iron rails.
Among the cast of characters depicted in the films were people who were often searching — for a missing friend, for the true identity of a legendary railway graffiti writer known as Bozo Texino, or perhaps merely for the mixture of solitude and exhilaration that can be experienced as a train speeds through open terrain.
One of the presentations was a 22-minute film by Mr. Lukitsch called “Spruce Pine to Bostic,” which documents a trip he recently took with two friends in a train car full of rebar through mountain passes, swamps and tunnels near the western edge of North Carolina.
Some in the audience had ridden the trains themselves, and during an intermission a young man who goes by the name Thaddeus said he had boarded boxcars not only for fun but also to get to political demonstrations, a tradition he traced to the days of the Industrial Workers of the World, a radical labor union known as the Wobblies.
“It’s freedom,” he said of the experience. “It’s one of the most American things you can do.”
