A dog captures the world’s attention by performing a death-defying and heroic act. The incident, caught on surveillance camera in the capital city of Santiago, uncovers the epidemic problem of Chile’s homeless dog population. While exploring the world of Chile’s street dogs, “Lost Dogs” uncovers a social movement propelled by extraordinary people who, against enormous odds, consistently endeavor to rescue and protect the dogs. Their struggle demonstrates the power of compassion to transform society, turning betrayal into redemption.

An estimated 220,000 homeless dogs live amongst 7 million people in Santiago. Theirs’ is the “beat life” where only the fit, the smart and the lucky survive. Learning where to get food, water and shelter; understanding pack territories and routes that won’t lead to injury or death are all part of street-gang mentality essential for survival. Average lifespan of a street dog is between two and five years. In addition to starvation, cold and disease, there are the added dangers of collisions with cars, cruelty, and strychnine poisoning, the government’s M.O. for animal control.

Public apathy and desensitization is countered only by the tireless work of a handful of courageous activists. Like Gabriela Jarpa, who cares for some fifty stray dogs on the outskirts of Santiago. “Rinconada” is a ten-mile stretch of road that serves as the dumping ground for the city’s trash, sewage and dogs. It’s here that Gabriela enacts the solution to the problem: Adopt, educate, and sterilize. In three years, alongside working a full-time job and raising a family, she has adopted out nearly one hundred dogs via the worldwide web and had over one hundred sterilized. But her work is never done – as fast as she can adopt them out, others are abandoned.

On May 2, 2008, a volcano erupted in the south of Chile. The town of Chaitén was evacuated and all 4,500 residents were ordered by government to leave their animals behind. Public protest pressured the government to allow the army to free the cats and dogs locked in homes. Despite the efforts of animal welfare groups to rescue the survivors, more than one hundred dogs remain a year after the initial eruption. While documenting one of the last rescue attempts in Chaitén, Lost Dogs examines our reaction to such recurring tragedies in an effort to encourage global protocol for animals in environmental disasters.

Even before the film could have this impact, the earthquake of February 27, 2010 struck, and the ensuing tsunamis that killed as yet an unknown number of people and animals. The current situation cries out for international support in light of disease outbreaks, a shortage of experienced veterinarians and medical supplies, food shortages; hungry dogs turning feral, forming packs that will have the inevitable impact on wildlife and worsen the cycle of uncontrolled breeding. Lost Dogs will serve as a reminder to a world that has already forgotten.

Thirty animals were evacuated from Chaitén during the filming of Lost Dogs, but the story doesn’t end there… Seven dogs chosen from Rinconada and Chaitén would ultimately find their way to the Pacific Northwest of the United States. Their stories are astounding in complexity and heart, the journey laden with obstacles. Ambassadors for all the street dogs of Chile, their destinies have been greatly impacted by the hero dog, whose message lives on in Lost Dogs.

Copyright © 2009, 21st Paradigm Films

Vanessa Schulz:

Producer/Director, Camera/Editor

Vanessa Schulz

A lifelong photographer, Vanessa grew up in South Africa, deeply connected to the animal kingdom. Inspired by the film, The Big Blue, she became a NAUI Scuba Diving Instructor specializing in deep diving and underwater photography. After three years as a full-time dive instructor in the Comores Islands, she attended film school in Cape Town – to combine, in the art of filmmaking, her passion to protect animals with her creative skills as photographer and Graphic Designer. The camera gives voice to the animals she seeks to protect.

Vanessa left Africa for the United States in 1995 to gain film experience as producer and cameraman for several networks including NBC, Fox Television, National Geographic, and the Discovery Channel. She was Assistant Producer on Discovery’s two-time Emmy award-winning “Wolves at our Door.” After several years of pushing for more truthful content in broadcast media, she began producing independent films. Her first, “Adventure for the Soul,” explores what it means to be human in the face of raw and primal animal behavior.

To further her journey into environmental and animal rights activism, Vanessa founded 21st Paradigm, a non-profit organization that uses film to promote the intrinsic value of all life. Volunteering for In Defense of Animals, she documented trappers in the Ozarks, Missouri, going about their business of torturing wildlife. This lead to a co-production with Animal Protection Institute of the award-winning, “Cull of the Wild: The Truth behind Trapping.” Copies were distributed to 200 members of Congress to educate on the inhumanity of the grotesque practice of trapping. Simultaneously, the film exposed to the public the crime of the US department of “Wildlife Services,” which uses tax dollars to slaughter between four and five million wild animals annually. During production, Vanessa learnt of the trapping of newly-reintroduced Gray Wolves by “Wildlife Services” near her home in Idaho. This immediately birthed her next and most successful film, “Cost of Freedom,” an exposé on the gross exploitation of wildlife by powerful right-wing political factions. The film won sixteen festival selections and seven awards, including two “Best Documentary,” and one unique award specially created by judges of the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival – “For a filmmaker with the courage to pursue a difficult and controversial topic.”

Finally, through sheer tenacity, Vanessa was breaking new ground in the monopolized world of mainstream media. She has been invited as a public speaker and panelist on various subjects ranging from wolves to activism. Funding, however, still remains the greatest hindrance to her work. Vanessa has endeavored to raise production funds for a film about Captain Paul Watson and Sea Shepherd’s fight against the seal hunt in Canada, and after a three-year struggle, she was forced to shelve the project and return to South Africa. Here she worked with Conservation Air Patrol on production of “Africa Burning” to expose the completely unacknowledged fact that two thirds of Africa burns every year as a result of man, drastically impacting global climate change and causing irreversible desertification. To provide what Vanessa believes is the most effective solution to the world’s environmental collapse, she produced “Permaculture: A Quiet Revolution,” an inspirational look at the 8th International Permaculture Convergence in Brazil. In 2007, Vanessa reestablished 21st Paradigm’s base in Bend, Oregon.

“Lost Dogs“ is her current project about Chile’s (and the world’s) stray dog crisis, a story aimed at lifting humanity’s consciousness and compassion through our closest animal companion, the dog. Pending funding and earthquakes, it is scheduled for release in December 2010.

You can meet the rest of the 21st Paradigm team here: MEET THE CREW