Tag Archives: documentary

IndieGoGo campaign

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Hi friends, family and 27 Months supporters!

We are launching an IndieGoGo crowd-funding campaign to raise $35,000 to allow us to film for the volunteers’ second year of service. We’ve already got hundreds of hours of footage from the first year and wonderful moments to share in the film, but we need help to make sure we film throughout the second year and see what happens to the volunteers and what mark they leave on the people of their host communities.

Hopefully you’ve watched the trailer for 27 Months and are excited to see the final film. Please support us by clicking on the IndieGoGo badge to the right, watching the pitch video and sharing our campaign with friends, colleagues, returned volunteers or anyone through the social media buttons on the right.

Among the various perks you can get for supporting the project: a DVD of the film, invitations to screenings, your own video to tell a story on the film’s website or to keep for yourself and a stainless steel water bottle, courtesy of Flipside Gear, that is the perfect indestructible companion for all your adventures. AND it lets you tell the story behind the question.

Hint: Each country has its own unique food that you can’t miss if you’re there. FYI Catherine eats balut in the IndieGoGo video, so check that out :)

 

Product Information
Approved by lunch ladies and Mother Nature, our 1.0L Stainless Sports Bottle is perfect for green thinkers on the go (or on campus). Eco-friendly and compact, it’s sure to quench your thirst for style and refreshment.

  • Made of 18/8, food-grade stainless steel
  • No lining & no BPA or other toxins
  • Wide mouth for easy drinking
  • Durable, BPA-free & phalate-free screw-on top
  • Holds 1.0 liters
  • Thin profile to fit most cup holders & bike bottle holders
  • Hand wash only

Why am I making this film?

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You get an idea, inspired by a shadowy and unformed feeling that sits somewhere between the diaphragm and the back of the throat, and you start to imagine you could do something good in the world. You know you are small and the world is vast and constantly changing. If you stand at any one point on it, even on your tiptoes with your neck craning above the shifting horizon, you still can’t get a good perspective on any other part of it. You must move to another point and ask that person next to you what you are seeing because it doesn’t quite make sense yet.

Then you realize your idea has brought you a distance from your past self, maybe philosophically or emotionally, but maybe just physically. And you like it. You like who you have become and you like all those people you’ve met that you never would have met if you had stood at your starting point. Where once you saw in black and white, now you see in nuance and and complexity. Now you are a problem-solver, a storyteller, a humanist.

“I’ve started down a road and can’t turn back.”

That’s a statement many Peace Corps volunteers think.

“I’ve started down a road and can’t turn back. I’m so glad I brought my camera.”

That’s me. Not a Peace Corps volunteer. A documentary filmmaker. (Also, not a rare species these days.)

I’ve jumped into something I believe in — a film emerging from a nebula of ideals and individual curiosity and commitment and cultural confusion and universalism — and I don’t want to turn back. From my days as a foreign exchange student in Senegal when I met the first Peace Corps volunteers I’d ever seen in the field, I knew I had to bear witness to the transformation of these individuals and the maturation of America’s idea of itself as a goodwill nation. And I always wanted to know what members of the community learned from having an American join them for a brief time. What is the legacy of the PCV?

As a filmmaker, I believe in patient and revealing storytelling and knew this had to be a long-term project. One that endures the same time as the ‘subjects’, in this case three people with different backgrounds and beliefs who jumped into Peace Corps service for different reasons.  I found Andy, then Catherine, then Marcy, and they — happily for me — committed themselves to joining the project. Which is to say, they are the project.

So, now I’ve got three people with me on this road. And we are trying to make sense of what we are seeing with the help of those along the way.