One Bridge to the Next
One Bridge to the Next addresses the emerging field of street medicine. In 1992, Dr. Jim Withers began doing night rounds on the streets of Pittsburgh, offering medical assistance and support to the homeless. Fifteen years later, the organization he founded, Operation Safety Net, is a pioneering model in a growing movement to provide healthcare to the homeless. Dr. Withers and his team navigate riverbanks, bridges and alleyways to bring medical help and social justice to those who have fallen through the cracks of society. The complex condition of the chronically homeless is depicted through vivid characters—a 70-year-old former architect, a laid-off steel mill worker and an ex-drag queen failing from cancer. In a time when our national healthcare policy is under increasing scrutiny, this story illuminates the committed efforts within a single urban area to create a humane society and dignity for those on our streets.
Trailer
Credits
Director/Producer: Kim A. Snyder
Producer: Peggy Rajski
Cinematographer: Greg Poschman
Editors: Shilpi Gupta, Li-Shin Yu
Running time: 31 min.
Website: www.becausefoundation.org
About the Filmmaker
KIM A. SNYDER is an award-winning documentary filmmaker. She most recently co-founded the BeCause Foundation to produce a series of documentaries designed to raise awareness about socially conscious global issues and inspire philanthropy through the power of film. Following her short documentary One Bridge to the Next, about the burgeoning field of "street medicine," Her most recent short, Crossing Midnight, focuses on the healthcare crisis in Eastern Burma and an extraordinary community of refugees battling the odds to help their own. Her next work is set in America's rural South, where on the eve of the recent election, a town deals with issues of immigrant integration and reckons with its segregated past.
Snyder directed and produced the award-winning documentary I Remember Me, which won numerous festival awards including Best Documentary at the Denver International Film Festival, the Audience Award at the Sarasota Film Festival and an Honorable Mention at the Hamptons International Film Festival. I Remember Me was distributed theatrically in the US by Zeitgeist Films and has been distributed on DVD in over 22 countries. She has also directed and produced numerous short documentaries for cable network Plum TV.
Snyder has also published numerous articles for Variety and worked as media producer for the Hamptons International Film Festival, producing commercials, trailers and promotional media.
In 1994, Snyder associate produced the Academy Award-winning short film Trevor, directed and produced by Peggy Rajski, which became the cornerstone of The Trevor Project, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to suicide prevention among gay youth. Snyder also served on the admissions review committee for New York University's Graduate Film Program, and has been a producer's rep for several critically acclaimed foreign films including Crows (New Yorker Films), directed by Dorota Kedzierzawska. Snyder graduated with a masters in international affairs from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.