Halfway There

I'm at Heathrow airport in the UK, halfway to Nairobi. It has been such a whirlwind getting to this point - just one week ago I decided to throw caution to the wind and embrace this amazing opportunity. A little over two weeks ago, I had never even heard of the Kibera Kids short film or the Hot Sun Foundation, and certainly I had not heard about TOGETHERNESS SUPREME, the feature film I will be documenting.

So why am I doing it? Since I first embraced the medium of documentary film, my mission was to tell stories that are otherwise not shared. Particularly, I wanted to share stories that -- in stark contrast to mainstream media depictions of famine, disease, ethnic war, poverty and endangered wildlife -- showed the creativity, ingenuity, generosity, resourcefulness and proud spirit of the Africans I had encountered during my time on the continent. But I felt an awkwardness about reaping their stories for Western consumption and wanted to find a way to nurture indigenous voices as well. I imagined a hybrid production of a feature film and a documentary shot simultaneously. And somehow, almost two decades later, this vision has become manifest. I hope that this documentary will amplify the voices of the kids and youth of Kibera and help to bring their stories to audiences around the world.

Also, I'm grateful for Shravan Vidyarthi a talented Kenyan filmmaker who is generously helping me to capture this story. We start shooting Monday.

Finally, in addition to being halfway to Nairobi, I'm also halfway toward reaching my fundraising goal of $2K matching funds. These funds are crucial for me to be able to continue working with Shravan, purchase additional tape stock, and cut the footage into a trailer. Please, consider contributing using the link in the previous post.

AND HUGE THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO HAS CONTRIBUTED SO FAR!!!!