Supplied

“I Find Good Stories In My Own Backyard” | Rosie Dransfeld’s documentary Broke profiles Edmonton pawnbroker David Woolfson.

BROKE
Directed by Rosie Dransfeld. Paramount Theater (10233 Jasper Ave). Thu, Nov 5 (8pm) and Sat, Nov 7 (12 noon).

Welcome to A1 Trading, a quick stop for fast cash, faster insults, and no sympathy. On the surface, it looks like every pawnshop you’ve ever seen, filled with scuffed guitars and old televisions  discarded from former lives. But the real story of local filmmaker Rosie Dransfeld’s documentary Broke is David Woolfson, your not-so-friendly neighbourhood pawnbroker, and his heartbreaking cast of regular customers.

All over Canada, particularly right here in Edmonton, people are being hit hard by the economic slump; shopping cart collectors, bottle-bandits, and the homeless are more prevalent on the streets than ever before, and pawnshops have become their banks. It’s with these images that Dransfeld sets the stage for Broke.

“I wanted to do a story about poverty in North America,” Dransfeld says. “In Europe, when you’re poor, it’s considered bad luck. But here it’s believed because you didn’t work hard enough.... I wondered where is the place that they really show the neighbourhood they live in, where they show their survival skills?”

After a lengthy search, Dransfeld decided on A1 Trading, largely because of David Woolfson. He’s an unassuming figure — squat and grandfatherly, he hunches over his computer for much of the day playing solitaire. But from the first scene of Broke, it’s clear that this is not a man to haggle with. It’s Woolfson’s naturally curmudgeonly character that carries the film. As he explains in the opening narration, he is not a force for good or bad; he’s merely there to provide a service for people when they need him.

Dransfeld’s cinéma-vérité approach gives you a vivid sense of what it’s like to hang out in a pawnshop day after day, week after week. Enter A1 Trading’s most regular visitor during the film, Chris Hoard, Woolfson’s unofficial assistant. An ex-convict and, in his own words, “kind of a psychopath,” Hoard helps Woolfson with odd jobs around the shop, be it washing a toolbox or brewing coffee. Occasionally Hoard rants to Woolfson and the camera about being discriminated against on account of his Native heritage while trying to put together a lawsuit stemming from abuse he received growing up in a foster home.

He gets little sympathy, though, from Woolfson, who freely criticizes Hoard’s efforts in a thick South African accent. It’s the dynamic between them that supplies much of the drama in Broke, as the two bicker over any and every subject, from social justice to the worth of an iPod — think Clerks, minus the sex jokes.

“When you do cinéma-vérité, you have to find your story in there,” Dransfeld says. “I realized [Chris] was coming back every day, and watching the relationship develop, I thought, ‘This is cinematic gold.’ Eventually we started changing the shooting days to accommodate Chris’ schedule.”

The shop is practically a microcosm for social problems in Edmonton, as one customer regularly pawns his driver’s licence for a quick 10 bucks, which he tells the camera he’ll use to spend on a quick case of beer to forget his troubles. As Dransfeld says, “If they don’t have these pawnshops, what alternative to we have to offer them? There is none.... It’s not ‘us and them.’ These people are your neighbours. We’re all just people.”

Broke is the opening night gala film for the 2009 Global Visions Festival on Nov. 5 at the Paramount Theatre. (There’ll be a second screening on Nov. 7 at 12 noon.) Although no longer on speaking terms, both Woolfson and Hoard plan to attend and participate in a Q&A session following Thursday’s screening.

These days, Dransfeld says, Woolfson is still managing his shop, while Hoard has become the subject of Dransfeld’s latest work-in-progress — entitled The Manager, the film will focus on Hoard’s attempts to turn his life around as a property manager for residences in rough shape located not far from A1 Trading.

“As a documentary filmmaker you always want to look for a good story,” Dransfeld says. “I find mine in my own backyard.”