Here’s a quick update on our project where we resurrected my great-grandfather’s long lost opera and made a documentary about the adventure:
This month I’ve been working on fulfilling our Kickstarter donor rewards. (If you donated to our Kickstarter campaign to help fund the opera and you haven’t gotten an email with your reward information yet, let me know!)
The “Andina” TV broadcast last month was a success!
Our film recently aired on WTTW, Chicago’s PBS station, and I got so many nice emails and tweets and Facebook messages from strangers who saw the program! I have to say, getting an avalanche of feedback from Chicagoans who enjoyed the movie is of the coolest darn things I’ve ever experienced in my life. Here is a tiny sampling of what people had to say:
“Watching and thoroughly enjoying #mymomiscrying” – Kimberly
“I’m glad no one was around…cuz a brotha was bawling by the end of the documentary!!!” – Mustafa
“The documentary that both my dog and I give two paws up, it’s ‘Andina Lives’ by @arlenparsa” – Mariah
The film will re-air locally later this year and I want to pursue other broadcast opportunities as well, outside of this area. We’ll see if anyone else is interested!
Celebrating Black History Month
Tristan Hanson and I recently had the honor of screening our documentary Blueprint for Bronzeville (about housing discrimination and affordable homeownership activists) at a private Black History Month event hosted by BMO Harris Bank for its employees and clients. It was truly a delightful event and we had some important discussions afterward about both our shared history as a city and the work needed to build an equitable future for all residents.
One more thing – my “video of the month”
In January I made a weird New Year’s resolution to make and publish one video every month of 2018. It’s sort of an experiment. After having completed two films that took many years to make (The Way to Andina and Blueprint for Bronzeville), I’m eager to experiment with making short work much faster. I think this first video was a success: it got about 10,000 views the day after I uploaded it!
So without further ado, I want to share with you my first of 12 videos this year from January. It’s about a topic I care about and I hope you’ll take a couple of minutes to watch it (and share it if you like it). I’ll send you my second video next month, or you can subscribe to my YouTube Channel to get notified earlier once I publish it.
Adios for now,
Arlen