A Tender Story of Healing and Hope

Written By Sil Azevedo

This documentary tells the story of Shawn Clearsky Davies, a Canadian man finding his way to sobriety and personal healing. Given up for adoption the day he was born, Shawn sustained many wounds along the way: the separation from his Anishinaabe culture, racial prejudice and a broken adoptive home.

This is the quintessential independent production. Director Michael Del Monte saw the window open when Shawn was ready to seek healing and did not hesitate. He embarked on this beautiful journey with his heart and his camera, funding most of the project himself. The result is a tender, meaningful film.

Beautifully shot by director Del Monte and Mark Bone, of Art of Documentary -- a community I participate in and cherish as an alumnus -- this is a film that will touch the hearts of all those who have struggled with addiction and the hurt that goes along with it. Beyond that, the film has a universal message that will touch any person who cares.

Del Monte -- who has films featured on all the big streaming platforms -- decided to offer this for free on the Art of Documentary YouTube channel so anyone can watch. Here’s the link:


Sil Azevedo

I was seven years old when I got my first camera, a Kodak Instamatic 133. It was Christmas of 1973. Since then, I have always seen the world through the lens. It is my way of making sense, of visually dealing with paradoxes and complexities of life. In high school I was the lab rat and spent each free minute at the feet of the Beseler enlarger, hypnotized by its magical light. Still today I enjoy low light ambiences. They say photographers do it in the dark. I am living proof - ha! Architecture school followed as photography was not a career option in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The combination of art, composition, light, form and space, coupled with the demands of physics found in Architecture have their parallel in photography. The concepts are transferable. As I started my career in Architecture, I soon found that I was more excited about the concept and the print than the actual building. Fantasy is my reality. I kept shooting, learning and apprenticing with some incredible artists. In time, as life took its turns, my original passion for photography became my full time profession. It has been almost 20 years since I walked into the pro shop and charged the Hasselblad and the studio lights to my credit card. As he saw the bill and my naive optimism, even the salesman exclaimed, "you're going to have to sell a lot of pictures..." I did and still do, but what drives me is not that. It is the unstoppable desire to understand and to relate. To me, that is photography.

http://silazevedo.com
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