Filmmaker Earns Kudos

From music videos to feature films, Jethro Rothe-Kushel '03 has shot hundreds of films in a range of genres. But it is his documentaries that win him awards. Most recently the judges at the September Silver Lake Film Festival in Los Angeles gave Rothe-Kushel the Breaking Out Award for best new director. The honor came for what they called his "deeply moving" 90-minute documentary, Pharaoh's Streets:Homelessness andVoices of Providence in the City of Angels.

With a $600 research grant from Dartmouth, Rothe-Kushel shot 52 hours of raw footage in Dome Village, a group of houses that provide temporary shelter for the homeless in his native Los Angeles, during the summer of 2000. As he was filming protests against homelessness during the Democratic National Convention that August, police began firing rubber bullets at protesters. "I was faced with a moral quandary," says Rothe Kushel, a religion major. "Do I keep filming or put the camera down and help?" When he yelled for help—not realizing policemen were the shooters—some police started swinging rubber truncheons at him. He kept filming—capturing footage that aired that night on CBS News.

The footage also became the core of Pharaoh's Streets. The title derives from Rothe-Kushel's view of Dome Village founder and protest leader Ted Hayes as a Moses-like hero in the struggle against homelessness. "It all related back to my perspective on Moses and the Jewish people living under Pharaoh," says RotheKushel. "Suddenly, I started seeing everything through that lens. The skyscrapers surrounding Dome Village became like pyramids, and the way I saw it, the homeless were slaves."

Reel Deal Student director RotheKushel won his first documentaryaward prior to entering high school.

QOUTE/UNQOUTE "I'm concentrating on the here and now. I'm playing for the Big Green right now." DEFENSEMAN TREVOR BYRNE '03, ALREADY A FIFTH-ROUND DRAFT CHOICE OF THE NHL'B ST. LOUIS BLUES