100-mile housing film coming to Revelstoke

A new documentary about the concept of “100-mile housing” is being shown in Revelstoke next week.

The film, called Greening the Cube: 100-Mile Housing, was created by Rossland, B.C. filmmaker Tyler Austin Bradley over a two-year period.

The film takes its name from the book The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating (the author is featured in the film) and looks at the building sustainable housing using locally available materials.

“It’s about empowering local economies, local communities to address a lot of their own housing needs building to the local vernacular,” says Bradley.

He started on the film after meeting some builders near Grand Forks who were constructing homes using reclaimed, recycled, and natural material from a 100-mile area. At the time, Bradley, formerly a television producer in Vancouver, was looking for a project to work on.

“I decided I was ready to tackle a feature length documentary,” he says. “It just kind of fell into my lap.”

Bradley spent two years working on the film, following around both Sean Stands, who builds low-cost, low-tech, off-the-grid homes near Grand Forks; and Pete Matheson, a green builder whose homes meet building codes.

“There’s everything from those super-low cost Hobbit houses that Sean builds all the way up to fully permitted, up to code, straw bale homes,” says Bradley.

Part of Bradley’s goal with the film is to allow for areas for people to build experimental homes that don’t necessarily meet required building codes and regulations.

“What the film focuses on is putting the concept out there and also just trying to broach the subject of creating zoning or permit areas where experimental building can take place,” he says. “The thrust of film is reduce, re-use, recycle on one level and developing a different kind of zoning where these sorts of experiments can take place without people having to hide what they’re doing.”

Bradley moved to Rossland from Vancouver three years ago. Before that he was known as “Enviro Guy” and created a segment about environmental issues for a youth oriented news program called “Show 969” that was broadcast on the RAZER cable channel.

He says he spent more than $20,000 on the documentary and hopes to show it at film festivals and eventually sell it to television stations worldwide.

“With sustainability being a big focus worldwide we’re hoping we can sell it into a variety of English language markets,” he says.

Greening the Cube: 100-Mile Housing is being shown Wednesday, Nov. 4 at 7 p.m. at the United Church. It is being presented by the North Columbia Environmental Society.

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