When Murray Siple started chatting up a group of bottle collectors in a grocery store parking lot in North Vancouver, he had no idea that he’d stumbled upon the subjects of his latest documentary, Carts of Darkness.

“I actually wanted to interview them at the grocery store just because they were pretty humourous and it was a contrast to the people who were actually buying groceries. I thought that was going to be the video. Then they told me they rode shopping carts and I was like, ‘No way,’” the Vancouver filmmaker recalls. “I was sure they were lying or boasting to get me to go film with them or something, but the first day we went out, they did Mountain Highway, which is one of the steeper roads in North Van. They went 67 kilometres an hour and proved it. Immediately, I knew I had a film.”

The resulting film is not only a look at this unique segment of North Vancouver’s population—down-and-out characters who make a living collecting bottles from blue bins in the affluent neighbourhood and use shopping carts as their preferred mode of transportation—it’s a story about Siple himself. After studying film at Emily Carr and carving a niche making snowboarding and skateboarding flicks in the early ’90s (before the sports enjoyed mainstream popularity), Siple was involved in a car accident in 1996 that left him wheelchair-bound. Carts of Darkness is Siple’s first film since his accident, and his journey as a filmmaker befriending the characters and gaining their trust is as much a part of the film as the binners themselves.

“I didn’t even plan to be in it but it worked out. I’m glad I’m in it,” says the soft-spoken Siple. “I was doing the narration the other day and I had to say, ‘What am I doing in this room? Aren’t I supposed to be in the other room directing someone else doing the narration?’ It was an interesting experience to be on the other side of the camera; I never really have been and I’m usually pretty shy.”

The documentary follows people like Al, a burly redhead who takes his cart racing seriously; Furgie, a scruffy alcoholic who camps under a bridge in North Vancouver; and Bob, who gave up the nine-to-five lifestyle years ago to pursue a life of art over a three-year period. The men give Siple virtually unlimited access to their lives and speak frankly about their philosophies, pasts and struggles with things like alcohol and jail time.

“I didn’t have to do anything. I think it was simply because they recognized that I was trying to do something as a person with a disability and I think in a way that lumped me into their stereotypical group of being an outsider,” Siple says of the mens’ trust in him, adding his previous experience making snowboard films also scored points. “They wanted to be documented riding shopping carts. I’m sure they’d been waiting to; they’d been doing it for years and no one had even taken a photo of them, which I think is amazing. Nobody had really interviewed them before. They had stories to tell and as I learned from the four men who died along the way, these stories had to get out there and they needed a voice, so as soon as the camera was on they never stopped talking.”

But while Furgie, Al and Bob gave Siple unlimited access, it was still a struggle to create the film; not only were his subjects difficult to track down (“We had to find them every time we had to film. They didn’t have cell phones,” Siple says), but Siple’s limited mobility meant a lot of preparation and planning had to be done before the crew could shoot.

“Before we’d shoot, I’d go and research everything myself. I didn’t want to tie up the filmmaking process by having people carry me everywhere, so I’d get carried into places by myself or with the subjects in the film and take photos or gather as much information as I could so when we came back with a crew, I could send them in there without me, so they wouldn’t have the delay of having to carry me into the scene,” he explains. “Then they’d come back out and show me the footage. I was the director, but a lot of the time I’d have to let the crew go in there on their own and come back with hopefully similar footage that I’d seen live the day before.”

The filmmaking process may have been long and rife with unique challenges, but the result is a beautifully shot film delving into both the characters of North Vancouver’s binner community and Siple himself. The Victoria screening marks Carts of Darkness’ world premiere, not to mention the first time Siple and the subjects of the film—Al is coming over for the show—have seen it on the big screen. Siple isn’t sure what kind of impact the film will have on people like Al and Bob and Furgie, but he hopes it is positive.

“The reaction they get from people if it becomes popular and successful will hopefully encourage them. I’d like to see all of them get out of bottle collecting; even though they make it seem like it’s a happy and acceptable way to go, it’s not taking them forward in any way,” says Siple. “For the guys in my film that do it, that money just leads to alcohol and that just leads straight to nowhere.” M