Hello again,
Our (work in progress) Hill screening is over now and what an event it was.
Dozens of supporters filled in the Congressional Visitor Center’s theater in Washington DC on Monday and it turned out be a very emotional night. We just wanted to take a moment and say “Thank You” to all those who made it possible, especially Congressman Chris Smith and his staff who invited us and staged the event. Without their support and commitment to the issue, the opportunity to show our film on the Hill may have never happened.
There have been so many comments of support and appreciation for the film and its message in the hours since the screening finished. We have asked People to post comments on their websites and Facebook and think you will hear the most interesting comments directly from them.
This comes from Douglas Berg: I was inspired to write last night after watching the movie. David and Matt did a really good job at capturing the personal side of Japanese child abductions. Here is my latest article that I posted on bachome. www.bachome.org/wordpress/2011/11/the-new-normal/
More than any comment, inspring someone to act is the greatest compliment we could ever receive.
It feels like we really connected with the audience on human level, and that will play well even with people who may not be familiar with the issue. We feel more than ever that it is question of, not if, but when we will finally catch our big break. Relatedly we have submitted to Sundance, South by Southwest and the Berlin Film Festival. We plan to submit to 15 more festivals before Spring 2012 and are building up our vacation days in preparation to attend our premiere early next year.
Thanks again so much. May this be only the beginning!
Matt and David
Hello everybody,
Just wanted to let you know we were not accepted at Toronto International film festival. We will meet with Peter Broderick this Friday and formulate the next plan. We will let you know what the next moves will be soon after.
If you haven’t seen it yet, please have a read of this piece out in the JT yesterday by Colin Jones.
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20110809zg.html
Thanks again so much for your support.
David and Matt
Hello everyone,
Just a brief note. We were declined by the Silverdocs festival. Admittedly, we were really hoping to premiere there, so it’s a little bit of a let down.
We wonder out loud if the trio of calamities to strike Japan in March have made for an atmosphere where festival programmers are hesitant to screen anything that might be perceived as “piling on” when Japan is down. With that in mind we are encouraged by the recent Hague announcement by Prime Minister Kan, because, if anything, it shows Japan is ready to have the issue approached. We couldn’t imagine a better time for our film to be seen.
In keeping to our plan we will submit to Toronto by June 3rd and Telluride soon after.
Thanks again so much for your support.
David and Matt
Hello again,
Just wanted to give everyone a brief update.
We were declined from both Cannes and LA Film festival. We are still waiting to hear from Silverdocs. We have poured a lot of effort into Silverdocs and our fingers are crossed. We think that could be a wonderful festival and we could get a big crowd to attend.
Our submissions to Toronto and Telluride are on track and we will be sending them off in the next few weeks.
Of course the news that Japan is planning to announce they will join the Hague convention caught our eye. http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110428a2.html
We are waiting with great interest to see how that will play out.
Thanks so much for your interest.
David and Matt
Hello Everyone,
I just wanted to give a quick update regarding our screening at the Cardozo Law School in New York last Tuesday (Feb. 15th).
It was a wonderful event and we were so honored to have been invited and to have participated. We received many flattering comments from the audience immediately afterward and had a very lively discussion about the issue on the panel. I’ve included some photos for your perusal. As we expected, most people were absolutely shocked that this situation existed in Japan and wanted to know why, how and learn more about the issue.
We also received the news that the Stanford Fair Use Review Project has accepted our application and will review our film in the near future. This is wonderful news and will be a big help to us. We appreciate tremendously our Stanford connections who pitched in their support for that effort.
Everything is moving forward on schedule for our submission to the 5 festivals we mentioned back in December. The first one goes out this coming week on Feb. 24th.Things should really pick up in the next couple months. I’ll include the list below again for reference.
Thanks so much again for your interest and support.
David and Matt
1. Los Angeles Film Festival – Submission: Feb. 24th, 2011, - Event June 16-26th, 2011, – Los Angeles
2. Silver Docs (Documentary festival) - Submission: March 4, 2011, - Event June 20-26th, 2011, – Silver Springs MD.
3. Cannes Film Festival - Submission: March 11th, 2011, - Event May 11-22nd, 2011, – Cannes, France
4. Toronto Film Festival – Submission: April 1st, 2011, - Event Early Sept 8-18. 2011, – Toronto, Canada
5. Telluride Film Festival - Submission: Mid-April, 2011, - Event Early Sept. 2011, – Telluride, Colorado
From our newsletter earlier this month.
Happy holidays and looking forward to a big new year!
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Hello everybody,
Matt, Mo and I are in Los Angeles. We have spent a lot of time the last few days discussing the film, editing and planning our strategy for the first half of 2011.
First a little bit on the status of the cut. We have made the hard choice to take the animation out of the film.
It will still have a home on the DVD extras and we appreciate all the hard work of everybody who worked on it, but in the end, after many ideas and experiments, it just did not match and we feel the film is stronger without it. The other recent development is that after a lot of back and forth, NHK has declined to allow us the rights to use parts of their copyrighted material. We are busy seeing what other avenues we can take to address that situation. With those changes we are now reworking the film and we will finish this weekend with a “Latch” cut. From there we will start the music/sound and other finishing processes. Our goal is a final cut by Feb 21st.
Just after Thanksgiving Matt attended an event held by our fiscal sponsor, the IDA, and met “The Cove” distributor Roadside Attractions president Eric d’Arbeloff. Without having seen our film yet, Eric’s advice was to “create buzz” about the film and then come and see him again. Using his suggestions, and others from contacts and friends in the industry, we have come up with the following plan which will take us through the first half of the coming year.
Starting February we will apply to the following five festivals:
1. Los Angeles Film Festival – Submission: Feb. 24th, 2011, – Event June 16-26th, 2011, – Los Angeles
2. Silver Docs (Documentary festival) - Submission: March 4, 2011, – Event June 20-26th, 2011, – Silver Springs MD.
3. Cannes Film Festival - Submission: March 11th, 2011, – Event May 11-22nd, 2011, – Cannes, France
4. Toronto Film Festival – Submission: April 1st, 2011, – Event Early Sept 8-18. 2011, – Toronto, Canada
5. Telluride Film Festival - Submission: Mid-April, 2011, – Event Early Sept. 2011, – Telluride, Colorado
Any of these would be wonderful to get into but Toronto would really be the feather in our cap. They stipulate that their festival be the international premiere so with the exception of Cannes we have tried to limit the other entries to U.S. festivals so we will have the best chance at Toronto.
We’d like to ask everyone to take a look at the list and we would be extremely grateful for introductions to any people who might be helpful or influential in gaining acceptance to any of these events.
There are so many reasons why we feel the time has never been better for our film to premiere. Most importantly we want to repay all the people who have given us so much along the way.
Thank you again for your continued support.
David and Matt
Just a brief update. We are still waiting to hear back from Sundance. The word is that a decision will come along by the end of November or even early December.
Matt, Mo (Our editor) and myself, met in LA last weekend to iron out some issues with the animation and other areas. It was a very good session and we will probably meet again in early December. Here’s a photo from our editing bay. Note the bleary eyes from being in a dark room too long.
Thanks so much for your support.
More soon,
David and Matt
Hello Everyone,
I am terribly sorry I wasn’t able to do this earlier but I wanted to let everyone know that we submitted to Sundance back on Sept. 24th. The dash to the Sundance office in Beverly Hills with only minutes to spare might make for a good film itself some day. We would like to take this chance to thank our editor Mo for all her work above and beyond the call of duty getting the cut in. We have finally been able to add the animation section and we think it adds a lot of historical context and style to the film. We can’t wait to show it to everyone.
We are entered in the international documentary division and we should hear an answer by late November.
Thank you again for your continued support.
David and Matt
Hello everybody,
Just a brief update. With 41 days to go to the submission date for Sundance we are busier than ever getting the film in the best shape possible.
It’s a very exciting time as we go about post-production and making decisions for final cut.
Thanks so much again for your support and interest.
David and Matt
We are extremely excited to report that we received a total of $35,451.42 for the total amount of contributions to the film during the match fund period that ended June 30th. There was a big swell at the deadline that pushed us higher than we ever thought we would go! This also means we hit the upper limit of the Wyncote foundation match fund offer so we will have the maximum amount from that available to us very soon.
We can’t thank everybody enough. This has helped enormously and we are already busy making the edits and additions to the film.
We have now filled 90% of our ultimate funding goal. Though we have still have a little bit more to go, the financial status of the film has never been better than it is now. We appreciate this support tremendously. It has been a huge emotional lift for Matt and myself as well. The immediate goal is to submit the film to Sundance this September and keep you updated here as things progress.
The last significant thing we can think to add to the film is a “big name” executive producer. If someone like Morgan Freeman, Angelina Jolie, and or Bono agreed to support the project, it is widely suggested to us that doors would start flying open. We have directly tried a number of stars who we thought would be especially open to such a project but have not had much luck yet. If anybody has connections to a figure with such name recognition and could introduce our project to them, we would be willing to go wherever and whenever to make our pitch. It might just be an email or a phone call to get that process started. Please send any suggestions our way and we will gladly pick up the trail from there.
Thank you so much. Your support has been incredible.
David and Matt
