Wow. Who knew that fundraising was so hard? I mean, I knew. I did. Now I know more.
I just got one mantra: for the buzos. For the buzos. For the buzos.
Here’s some more behind the scenes!!!!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/izaca/100-fires-living-from-a-landfill
I’m getting my panties all up in a twist. Seriously. Every backer that gets on board makes me smile uncontrollably. Support, even in the smallest doses, can me so much in the big lonely underfunded world of documentary filmmaking. THANK YOU!
Now, MORE!
I will be posting another behind the scenes tonight about me in the trash, filmming, looking v. dirty
Kids were crawling over me all the time when I was shooting… I just tried to incorporate them after a while otherwise I just couldn’t work. I realized after a while that incorprating them in this way was involving them in the process. I was letting them “inside” my camera and letting them own a part of the picture… a camera can be a powerful gun you aim at people unless you let them in behind it. Anyways, there is a caveat to doing that… kids touch everything. So I did have to balance letting them near me and keeping them engaged in front of the camera away from me.
ALRIGHT! We got $945 so far!!!
THANK YOU SO MUCH for all the backers so far on the project! We’ve reached almost $1000 and counting!!!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/izaca/100-fires-living-from-a-landfill
Thank you so much for forwarding onto friends and family and whatever outreach you’ve been able to give me beyond your direct contributions which mean the world to me (and more so, to the buzos).
Major props, a zillion thanks, Happy Holidays, Kicks, Hi-Fives, and not necessarily in that order to each and everyone of you. For those whom I don’t know directly, lets fix that. You’re on my team now.
Abrazos de mi corazon
Isabelle
PS. Y’all have any questions or ideas for better rewards, people to contact, companies to reach out to , WHATEVER, email me!
Isabelle@izaca.com
www.izaca.com
twitter.com/izacafilm
www.100firesfilm.com
http://www.facebook.com/pages/100-Fires-Living-from-a-Landfill-or-The-Living-Dead/111238415564383
Short of it: Awesome New Trailer and a Kickstarter Campaign to Boot, CHECK IT:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/izaca/100-fires-living-from-a-landfill
Life is raw. Imagine that you can’t read or write. The only job you can find is picking through other people’s garbage. Your life depends on what you find: whether it’s plastic bottles or cans, old shoes, or salami covered in flies. Along the way you get infected from hospital needles, burned by trash that’s caught fire, cut from shards of metal, and poisoned with constant diarrhea from rotten food. You even find amputated arms and legs. You continue because everything you come across has the potential for pennies, and you build your dollar a day piece by piece.
100 Fires: Living From a Landfill is a feature length documentary about the smoking dump that crouches outside the city of Santiago in the Dominican Republic. The film follows the buzos, or trash divers, who support themselves solely off what they can scavenge from the dump. They build their houses out of trash, feed their children with rotten food, and make less than a dollar a day by finding and selling piles of metal, plastic, cardboard, and anything else people will buy. We want to give voices to this community; ignored by their own government, invisible to society, and threatened by the toxic dump upon which they rely for survival.
What we need:
Filming for 100 Fires is complete. We now need your help for post-production. Funds will be used for offline/online editing, coloring, and sound composing, engineering, and mixing. We will also use the funds for DVD graphic art, DVD printing, and film festival submission fees.
CHECK OUT THE VIDEO OF ME TALKING!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/izaca/100-fires-living-from-a-landfill
In the time since my last musings, much has happened.
On February 2 I became a very, very proud aunt of Dylan. Much family time ensued. Here are a few pictures:
Currently, I am in the midst of working on and wrapping up:
1. Universal Digital Library documentary for Carnegie Mellon University
2. Nobel Science Laureate Conclave for IIIT-A University in Allahabad, India
3. Dominican Republic documentary “100 Fires: Living in a Landfill”
Because the above mentioned projects are all-consuming, I hired an editor named Seth Wood to finish two shorts for me that I’ve been meaning to get on the table for a while. I believe many of you will enjoy one or both of these:
1. Water Warriors, featuring spoken word artist Will Copeland.
Will delivers a kick-ass poem he wrote about the privatization of water in our communities.
http://www.izaca.com/film_warriors.htm
2. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 2, featuring four fantastic performers
who offer a modern dance rendition of one of Shakespeare’s sonnets.
http://www.izaca.com/film_shakespeare.htm
***AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST***
A new trailer on the new film website www.100FiresFilm.com
That’s it. Let me know how y’all like everything, and how you’re doing if you have time to update me.
Abrazos
Isabelle
The Eve of Inauguration – Jan 19, 2009
Through a friend of a friend of a friend, I got lucky and stayed some blocks behind the US Capitol building the night before the presidential inauguration. The roads had already been closed down, there were groups of young army boys on the street corners, sirens were going off at strange intervals, and the city was definitely bursting with an undercurrent of electrical energy. For those of you who were there, you know the feeling I am talking about. The anticipation was tremendous.
The Day-Of Jan 20, 2009
A normal 30 minute walk to the mall the morning-of took close to three hours. Throngs of people were swarming down closed city streets. We even had to walk down into the 395 highway tunnel to be able to correctly make the detour, treading where no non-suicidal man had dared to tread for a decade. Vendors covered in pins and buttons were selling their wares at every corner, as well as Obama themed gloves, scarves, t-shirts, sweatshirts, etc. I kept thinking, forget this souvenir stuff, I’m about to see the real guy and make a real souvenir.
My unticketed hands hiked to the back of the mall, in front of the Washington Monument. A jumbotron TV allowed us to see the proceedings, making my experience a mix of both worlds. I was there, lost in the crowd, standing on the mall, yet getting the up close and personal camerawork of the events on TV.
I was startled by the diversity of the crowd: young, old, man, woman, and every race and ethnicity I could guess and more. There were no protestors, anywhere, only people climbing in trees, on top of snack stands, on top of port-a-potty’s. So this is what 2 million people feels like, I thought.
The jumbotron TV fed us images - Cheney rolls by, Bush gets unanimously booed, and the Obamas are cheered one by one as they come out into the stands. Barack finally takes the stage and delivers as 17 minute speech chock full of eloquence, in which the tone is serious, no-nonsense, somber and yet committed to change.
Yes.
This is our president. My president.
BARACK OBAMA.
Enjoy the pictures. And for those of you out there who are not pro-Obama, I respect that too, and let’s stay friends. ?
