For a long time after the release of the LGBT documentary Fish Out of Water, award-winning director Ky Dickens was anxious to start a new project. "This is like when you go out and try to look for a boyfriend or a girlfriend," Dickens joked, "You have to wait for it to find you." Dickens said she knew the right film would eventually come to her.
Dickens' ideas for a new project started last May. She recalled reading about a 9-year-old Dutch boy named Ruben van Assouw. Assouw was the sole survivor of Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771, which crashed on approach to Tripoli International Airport in the early evening hours of May 12, 2010. Struck by his amazing story of survival, Dickens was intrigued. She continued to look into other aviation accidents yielding sole or "lone" survivors.
"The more I researched the more I found that many [sole survivors] were children," Dickens said, "[who] just appeared to walk away unscathed from accidents where nothing was left." At the time, Dickens was not set on the idea for a film, she was just curious.
Her career was already off to a great start. Fish Out of Water, Dickens' first feature film, explored the seven Bible passages notoriously used to condemn homosexuality and arrest the struggle for equality. The documentary received awards and nominations in festivals all around the country, and more importantly, provided the LGBT community with a tool they did not have before.
"Fish Out of Water felt like the most difficult thing that I have ever done," Dickens recalled, "Because I felt like I needed to give it my full undivided attention for three to four years every day." She felt desperate for a break.
Dickens headed to the Burning Man festival in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, just outside of Reno, in August of last year. During her research about sole survivors she recalled an accident in Reno with a lone survivor; Galaxy Airlines Flight 203 crashed shortly after takeoff in the early hours of Jan. 21, 1985, killing 73 people. George Lamson, 17 at the time, was the sole survivor. Dickens reached out to him.
The Chicago filmmaker and the sole survivor met for lunch before Dickens headed into the desert for the five-day festival. "We started talking and had an 'a-ha' moment," said Dickens. The two bonded over similar experiences. In high school, Dickens was involved in a fatal car accident, which left her with guilt she still carries. Still unsure if she is ready to talk openly about what happened, Dickens recalled writing a paper about the accident for an English class. Without her consent, the paper was made public. Dickens said the publicity made the situation worse and only intensified her feelings of remorse and responsibility about the events that unfolded after the accident.
Althrough her conversation with Lamson, Dickens began to realize how a survivor's trauma was often misunderstood. "I think that we're all guilty of this to some degree," said Dickens. "If you hear a guy just came back from war and everyone in his contingent was killed, many people would say, 'you're so lucky' … or someone who survived AIDS, while all of his friends died, or the only house standing in an Alabama neighborhood after a tornado…we don't realize the damage of something dying with that person that day, too. When you witness an entire community obliterated, a great deal of damage is done."
She said society tends to assign to survivors the need to feel lucky or grateful. After the accident, Lamson was praised in the media as a hero and the product of a miracle, complicating his own sense of identity. "We don't take the time to assimilate someone back into society with the resources they need," said Dickens. With no one to relate to, Lamson was indeed a lone survivor.
On her way back from Burning Man, Dickens had six hours to kill before her flight. Though she barely knew him, she called Lamson to see if he would like to meet for breakfast. Lamson picked Dickens up from the airport. After passing several restaurants, Dickens asked why they had not yet stopped. "He said, 'I am going to take you somewhere,' " remembered Dickens. "I immediately said to myself, 'My mother told me not to get into a car with a stranger!' "
They stopped at a field on the side of the road and Dickens was instructed to get out of the car. "I thought, 'This is it,' " said Dickens, "But then he started telling me, 'this is where the plane went down,' and then he looked at me and said, 'I've never told anyone this…I've never come back here.' " Lamson told Dickens he wanted to make a film with her.
"I told him if he put his whole self into it, then I'd put my whole self into it. It was kind of a dramatic moment," laughed Dickens; that was when she knew she would be making her next film.
Having completed a successful bid for $20,000 on Kickstarter, production for Sole Survivor, is well underway.
Sole Survivor will be the second feature film for Yellow Wing Productions, Dickens' Chicago-based production company. The film focuses on lone survivors of airplane crashes as they, "embody the experience of all types of survivor because their experience is acute, public and dramatic." The documentary follows George Lamson, one of fourteen sole survivors in a commuter plane crash. With Dickens, Lamson will embark on a journey across eleven countries, three generations and a myriad of cultures to connect with the thirteen other sole survivors of large-scale commercial plane crashes.
"I think there are two things that I like to do when deciding what project to work on," said Dickens, "I like to find a story or topic that has not been covered in a specific way ... and I like it to have a spiritual element."
"There were many films that looked at spirituality," Dickens recalled when she first began filming Fish Out of Water, "but no film that had looked through the unique passages. None of the stories in Sole Survivor have ever been collected in a book or for a film. This film penetrates questions about purpose and random chance."
Dickens hopes to wrap up production by the end of the year with an intended release in 2012. More information is at www.solesurvivorfilm.com .
