Whitman janitor featured in ‘The Philosopher Kings’ film

Whitman janitor Josue Lajeunesse is one such philosopher, one of eight custodians featured in Patrick Shen’s new documentary, “The Philosopher Kings.” The film, nominated for best documentary film at the AFI-Discovery Channel SilverDocs documentary film festival, was screened Wednesday night in two University-sponsored showings in McCosh 10.

The film follows the stories of eight janitors at seven different universities across the country, depicting both their typical daily work and their life stories.

“Our hope is that ‘The Philosopher Kings’ makes the invisible visible,” producer Greg Bennick told the audience before the film began, citing the janitor as the classic example of the person who goes unseen on a daily basis.Answering audience questions after the show, Bennick said the idea for the film emerged out of a conversation with a college professor, who suggested, almost as a joke, that janitors might have unique insight into the human condition.

As they selected the subjects of their film, Bennick said he and Shen looked for “individuals with compelling life stories and the desire to tell them.” Among the custodians featured was a Vietnam veteran now working at Cornell, a Caltech janitor who lost his arm and experienced memory loss in a car accident, and a custodian at the Cornish College for the Arts with a developing artistic passion. Also featured were custodians from Duke, UC-Berkeley and University of Florida.

“It was very important for me in editing not to make it feel like it was eight separate movies,” Shen said in an interview with The Daily Princetonian.

While Lajeunesse’s portrayal in the film focuses on his work in Whitman College, his custodial work does not tell his whole story. To earn additional money to support his children and community, he drives a taxi at night after his custodial shift, and he has also launched a philanthropic project with his brother to bring water to his home village in Haiti. Fresh water is 25 miles away, but he and his brother helped construct a long section of PVC pipe to bring clean water to the village.

Lajeunesse plans to continue to expand the project, he said, describing plans to build cisterns in the village next.

“When you do the project for the community … you can’t say you’re finished. You work on it little bit by little bit,” he told the ‘Prince.’

Shen said he hoped Lajeunesse’s story, and those of the other seven contained in the film, would open his audience’s eyes to the previously unseen people around them. “I hope this movie continues inspiring people … in a way that expands their view of themselves.”