To say that A Different Path is Monteith McCollum’s elegiac and probing documentary about sidewalks is a bit like saying that Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure is about a bike.

McCollum, whose 2001 documentary Hybrid won the Jury Award in Documentary Feature at SXSW, reorients our thinking about how cities are designed by telling the stories of several iconoclasts busy fighting the ways in which cities have been thoughtlessly structured (structured so that only people in cars can maneuver them).

For elderly Richard, outside Seattle, sidewalks are a necessity as he walks through his neighborhood; for Michael, a bicyclist in Toronto, whimsical personal and group protest are fun ways to stick it to the man.

McCollum, who made A Different Path with his partner, Ariana Gerstein, doesn’t just capture straight documentary footage of his subjects – he’s animated parts of the film himself, which creates a deeply layered, almost metaphysical experience. McCollum, who teaches filmmaking and sound design at SUNY Binghamton, answered a few of our questions recently about A Different Path.

SXSW: You teach at SUNY Binghamton but live in the country – how do you get to work every day?

McCollum: I drive and it’s a frustration. I moved from Chicago, where I didn’t drive very often. We moved out here and we wanted countryside; we thought we were tired of the congestion of the city. A couple of years after we moved out here, we realized it was a lot more driving than we thought, and even though I power my car with grease and try to do other things to reduce pollution, it’s a frustration I deal with. We’re trying to move in to town. I grew up in a farm in Iowa, so I was used to country living, but you know, it’s complicated because most people are in this situation where they have to drive. That’s what I was trying to address in the film.

SXSW: The people you profile are a set of real iconoclasts. Were you more interested when you began this project in their personalities or in the issues they represent?

McCollum: I try to accentuate their unique perspectives but you have to be a little bit different to see problems. The bulk of us in this world are consumed with just getting through every day, doing our jobs. For some it might seem petty, but it’s a real endemic problem that cities are designed for automobiles with very little thought to how pedestrians get around.

SXSW: Which of the people you profile did you meet first?

McCollum: It was inspired by a friend of mine, Jim Sheppard, a philosopher; he tried to walk across Kansas City and he wanted to write one chapter about infrastructure. He walked on the streets, people yelled at him. He took a full day to walk across Kansas City And I thought, I never thought about that and that’s unusual – I never thought of these sidewalk islands. I was interested in him but he was not dealing with it every day, so I did a little search on it and Richard came up and I just started doing some telephone interviews with him and I was going to do this side piece on sidewalks and this notion of how we don’t provide for citizens to get around, but I was at Hot Docs in Canada and Michael was leading a Critical Mass group as I was walking out of a theatre … so I ran up to him and got his email.

SXSW: A Different Path isn’t a dry, straightforward documentary. What went into your decisions about creating your own animation for the film?

McCollum: I came from an art background; I don’t come from a journalistic background. I think about image and sound and what excites me is that combination. I want to have a narrative that speaks but I want to push my own limits as a visual person. I came from painting originally and what got me into film was animation and I think it can be very helpful – it can be playful, it can illustrate things. This time I ended up using old magazines. Other style decisions are that I’m just interested in pushing myself cinematically and I work in a bit of a collage style, the tapestry and you gather things as the film goes – you don’t want to get hammered with it right from the start.

SXSW: What are your hopes for the film beyond its screenings? Do you want people to be mobilized to change the way they use their cars?

McCollum: It’s like Miguel says in the film, raindrops add to the pool of water. My main reason is to start people thinking about how we design urban places. What we call development – is it development or de-development? They put in a Best Buy and don’t put in a sidewalk. I want people to think differently about how decisions are made in towns. I know it’s not easy, because the individuals I follow in this film spend a lot of their time doing it. But if people have an awareness, it’s a start.

Interview by Claiborne Smith