When I was a kid, my grandparents purchased an RV. My family used it often, regularly traveling around the East Coast and up into New England. I have many fond memories of our time camping — spending time close to my parents and sisters and meeting people at the campgrounds. We never spent any extended time in any of the campgrounds we visited but met the folks who were there for the season. My background love of camping led me to check out Amy Nicholson’s documentary “Happy Campers,” available on VOD on Sept. 10.
The documentary is focused on a small trailer park in Virginia. Many of the residents have been coming to this community for years, finding rest and joy in the simplicity of living in small spaces and creating relationships with the people who are there alongside them. It is a place where working-class people can find some respite without spending absurd amounts of money. It allows them to put aside the worries of the world for a while and focus on creating relationships.
Nicholson does an excellent job of capturing the community the residents in this campground foster. There are fewer interviews than often show up in these kinds of films, and instead, she shows through the parties and conversations and jovial rivalries the way that these residents have created friendships.
However, this film is also an incisive look at the way that lower-income housing is under attack. The campground is sold to a land developer who will be tearing down the residences to create space for something that will bring in people of a higher income bracket. So, throughout all of the fun, games, and humor, there is also a sense of melancholy as these people recognize that this community will be gone by the end of the season. The work they have done to make these small spaces something that reflects their personalities will be torn down to create something homogenous and corporate.
Always, there is a focus on the people who are in the community. There are small moments, like a woman feeding the stray cats, even though she says she doesn’t like cats. The men talking about the weather vane made out of a garbage can. The resident reading a poem about what this community means to him. Despite the sadness that is present throughout the film, the documentary never puts that sadness at the center. Instead, it shows the love that these people have for one another and for this place.
As the housing crisis in America continues to worsen, the availability of affordable housing is something that is on the minds of many people. “Happy Campers” fits neatly into that conversation and shows how vital even more meager homes are to the people who own them. It is a reminder that homes are more than the physical structures. They are the communities that we create.
Alise Chaffins is a Morgantown writer who loves movies and sharing her opinions. She reviews a movie from a streaming service every Saturday and one newly in theaters every Sunday. Find more at MacGuffin or Meaning on Substack.
