Two decades ago, a man named Rick Canty lost his mother and was shortly thereafter evicted from their home in Barry, Wales, due to bankruptcy charges he vehemently claimed were fraudulent. In protest against being forced to move, he climbed on top of the house and settled into a new routine on the rooftop, not just for a few days or weeks but for more than two years. Practically overnight, he became a local legend, and he inspired a unique sense of neighborly support that people still talk about in Barry.
Welsh filmmaker Isaac Atkin-Mayne, who grew up in Barry and heard much about Canty over the years, was inspired to tell a story of community, camaraderie, and the extraordinary things that ordinary people are capable of in the face of adversity.
Atkin-Mayne describes his short documentary, “Rick on the Roof,” as a glimpse inside of Canty’s “resolute and bit mad protest, but it’s also about a search for a kind of community that can feel rare today.” He especially responded to the notion of “strangers who are willing to support you through your struggle and make it their own, and 20 years later, remember those days as the most meaningful of their lives.”
The collaborative project includes archival footage captured by a local named Steven Toozer, who had initially planned to make a short film about Canty’s protest. Along with additional footage from news sources and other individuals, Atkin-Mayne adds a further dimension by including interviews with those who knew Canty personally. “This is a homegrown film about collective memory, retracing Rick’s story through the voices of those closest to him as a kind of visualised oral history,” Atkin-Mayne says.
Released amid the ongoing cost-of-living crisis in the U.K., “Rick on the Roof” delves into a story of how a quiet neighborhood rallied around an individual facing a truly unique set of circumstances. Neighbors sent food and essentials up to him via a bucket-and-pulley system, and even though the house was sold at auction in the summer of 2007, he continued to stay on the roof until he was forced off in late 2008.
“Barry, like much of the U.K., is facing a stark rising cost of living that’s quietly affecting people in many different ways,” Atkin-Mayne says. “Our goal in remembering Rick’s story is to to renew a sense of togetherness through hardship and remind ourselves that we’re never alone.”
