NonFiction
Active member
Howdy, DVXuser,
{I first posted this last evening, in the Documentary subforum, but mods removed it because it was in violation of the site guidelines on nonsubscribers posting crowdfunding campaigns. I've been guilty of using DVX user as a resource for years without paying. So I subscribed, because I value this resource. Okay, and also because I want to be able to share the following with you.}
For the past 7 years my wife Amy and I have been working on this passion project feature doc, that started out as a starry-eyed promotional tract for an NGO that give scholarships to poor girls in Nepal to get a rare high school diploma. We fell in love with one of our subjects and the hero's journey triumphal narrative arc she promised--
When we met her in 2008, Shanta was going to be the first girl from her village to get an education, to graduate, to go to med school, to return from her village to teach all the women how not to have so many babies. She was going to break the generational cycle of poverty. She was going to anchor our film that would take its place among a whole sheaf of girls' empowerment NGO docs like "Half the Sky" and "Girl Rising". It was sexy, it was even a little bit fundable.
But everything went horribly sideways. in 2010, shortly after we'd gotten our first grant to return to follow her story, the NGO who'd hired us called to ask us to edit Shanta out of the video we'd made for them--Shanta had died by suicide. We were, quite simply devastated emotionally, and set adrift professionally. Subsequently we learned that suicide has lately become the #1 cause of death for girls and women in Nepal.
No knowing what to do, but knowing we couldn't stop telling her story, we continued returning to Nepal, got close with Shanta's family. We embedded with them. They were uncannily open and we shared in their grief as we observed their everyday lives. We edited over this last year with the remarkable Fiona Otway (Hell & Back Again, Iraq in Fragments), and we have made a really unusual film. We did everything we can to leave our assumptions behind. There is no call to action. It's subtle, literary. You get close to this family who lives so very differently from how you (probably) do. It's a different kind of animal.
We are now ready to present the film to the world, thrilled to have our world premiere at Hot Docs at the end of this month. It is our first feature, and we are really honored.
We are also broke, and running a finishing funds campaign on Kickstarter to get us across that big, expensive hump of finalizing the film. Please have a look and if you feel so moved, pledge what you can. our real need is on the order of $70K, but we're glad we didn't reach that high directly in the Kickstarter, as the platform is all or nothing, and we can't afford not to fund. Please share around this around in your network, won't you?
Thank you for looking. Thank you for being part of DVXuser. Hope to see you over at the Kickstarter--tell us DVXuser sent you if you do pledge, huh? Keep up the good work.
Scott Squire
Producer/Co-Director/DP
Drawing the Tiger
{I first posted this last evening, in the Documentary subforum, but mods removed it because it was in violation of the site guidelines on nonsubscribers posting crowdfunding campaigns. I've been guilty of using DVX user as a resource for years without paying. So I subscribed, because I value this resource. Okay, and also because I want to be able to share the following with you.}
For the past 7 years my wife Amy and I have been working on this passion project feature doc, that started out as a starry-eyed promotional tract for an NGO that give scholarships to poor girls in Nepal to get a rare high school diploma. We fell in love with one of our subjects and the hero's journey triumphal narrative arc she promised--
When we met her in 2008, Shanta was going to be the first girl from her village to get an education, to graduate, to go to med school, to return from her village to teach all the women how not to have so many babies. She was going to break the generational cycle of poverty. She was going to anchor our film that would take its place among a whole sheaf of girls' empowerment NGO docs like "Half the Sky" and "Girl Rising". It was sexy, it was even a little bit fundable.
But everything went horribly sideways. in 2010, shortly after we'd gotten our first grant to return to follow her story, the NGO who'd hired us called to ask us to edit Shanta out of the video we'd made for them--Shanta had died by suicide. We were, quite simply devastated emotionally, and set adrift professionally. Subsequently we learned that suicide has lately become the #1 cause of death for girls and women in Nepal.
No knowing what to do, but knowing we couldn't stop telling her story, we continued returning to Nepal, got close with Shanta's family. We embedded with them. They were uncannily open and we shared in their grief as we observed their everyday lives. We edited over this last year with the remarkable Fiona Otway (Hell & Back Again, Iraq in Fragments), and we have made a really unusual film. We did everything we can to leave our assumptions behind. There is no call to action. It's subtle, literary. You get close to this family who lives so very differently from how you (probably) do. It's a different kind of animal.
We are now ready to present the film to the world, thrilled to have our world premiere at Hot Docs at the end of this month. It is our first feature, and we are really honored.
We are also broke, and running a finishing funds campaign on Kickstarter to get us across that big, expensive hump of finalizing the film. Please have a look and if you feel so moved, pledge what you can. our real need is on the order of $70K, but we're glad we didn't reach that high directly in the Kickstarter, as the platform is all or nothing, and we can't afford not to fund. Please share around this around in your network, won't you?
Thank you for looking. Thank you for being part of DVXuser. Hope to see you over at the Kickstarter--tell us DVXuser sent you if you do pledge, huh? Keep up the good work.
Scott Squire
Producer/Co-Director/DP
Drawing the Tiger