Just wanted to take a second and give a little summary from the screening event on Monday April 9th.
We showed the work-in-progress cut of our film in Akasaka and it was a huge success. It was an emotional night for many people and there were many generous comments afterward. It was a great networking opportunity and it extended into some drinks and food afterward. Many people had ideas for showing the film to various groups and were interested to know what we were planning to do next. Of course, the first thing we want to do is finish, and for that we are hoping to fill our budget needs ASAP. It was also the first time we showed the film to two of the subjects that appear in the film and that also went very well.
We also announced the creation of our campaign at Indiegogo. Please click here for more information.
Please consider a contribution and please visit the site to increase the traffic and spread the word.
Here are a few photos. Thanks for everyone’s support and attendance.
In response to one request I also found this CNN report on our film. It’s a little dated but the message is still the same.
Please have a look here.
Thanks so much,
David and Matt
As we prepare for our work-in-progress screening this evening we would like to announce that we have launched a crowdsourcing campaign at indiegogo.com:
indiegogo.com/From-The-Shadows
Visiting the project page will help push it to the top page of indiegogo, where it will be seen by a wider audience. So please consider a contribution, and just as importantly, please visit the page to help us increase the traffic and get it to where many people can see it.
For more information please contact us at: david@fromtheshadowsmovie.com .
David and Matt
Hello everyone,
Invitation for event supported by the Harvard Club of Japan (Screening and Seminar)
- – - – -
DATE: April 9, 2012 13:00 – 17:00 and 18:00 – 21:00
Child abduction to and within Japan: Movie screening of “From the Shadows” and seminar
http://www.facebook.com/events/315155805215355/
Please join us Monday April 9 at 1-2-2 Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo to watch a private screening of the documentary movie “From the Shadows,” (work in progress), and attend a seminar about child abduction to and within Japan. Filmmaker David Hearn and left-behind parent John Gomez will present the issue from their perspectives.
PLACE: 2F 1-2-2 Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo [Map]
ADMISSION: 4,000 yen for movie (6:30 pm), 4,000 yen for seminar (3 pm), 8,000 yen in total
REGISTRATION: Please register by e-mail to the address below.
e-mail: john.gomez.83@post.harvard.edu
- – - – -
Child abduction to and within Japan has become one of the most important social topics in Japan today. Its priority has now been raised to one of the five top-level bilateral issues between the US and Japan. At the UN General Assembly meeting on Sept. 21, 2011, President Obama asked Prime Minister Noda to proceed with joining the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction and resolve existing cases. This occurred as the result of a world-wide human rights movement. On January 6 this year, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell stated while visiting Japan that more progress is needed.
On April 9, 2012, a symposium on the issue of child abduction to/within Japan will be held at 1-2-2 Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo.
1:00 – 3:00 pm reception and networking
3:00 – 5:00 pm panel discussion seminar
5:00 – 6:00 pm networking and dinner
6:30 – 9:00 pm movie screening and discussion, (Please arrive between 6:00 – 6:30 pm)
“From the Shadows” is a documentary film about child abduction to/within Japan that focuses on the efforts of five left-behind parents to see their abducted children. Two are mothers; one is Japanese. Two others are the sole-surviving parent, yet they have no access to their child. In November 2011, by invitation from U.S. Congressman Chris Smith of New Jersey, the directors screened “From The Shadows” on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, and the film has appeared on CNN, ABC News and the Today Show. This will be a private screening and fundraiser in the evening with open discussion about the film to follow. Please note that the current version is mostly in English without Japanese subtitles. Filmmaker David Hearn will answer questions. The website and trailer are at: http://www.fromtheshadowsmovie.com/english/index.html
A panel discussion and Q&A session about various aspects of the child abduction issue in Japan from legal, psychological, diplomatic, and political perspectives will be held in the afternoon. Parliamentary Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Mr. Kazuyuki Hamada will deliver a welcoming speech. The purpose of the seminar is to improve understanding and facilitate discussion about this human rights issue amongst interested citizens and government officials of several countries. One aim is to consider constructive solutions for reuniting left-behind parents with their children. John Gomez is a member of the Harvard College Class of 1983. He has been working on the issue in both the US and Japan with left-behind parents and government officials from several countries around the world.
Hi everyone,
Apologies for the lack of communication lately. We have been extremely busy with film related activities.
Let me give you a quick status update. We are about to submit to Silverdocs which means we will have 10 submissions in that we are waiting to hear the results from. We think we have our best chances at Full Frame, Tribeca and Hot Docs in Canada. For various reasons we have had additional contact with these festivals, and we are very hopeful they will see the merit in inviting our film to join their line-up.
Considering the increased press activity around Japan’s possible ascension to the Hague Convention, we feel that the time absolutely could not be better for our film to be screened and play its role in the discussion.
With so many things going on we hope to have more news in the near future. It’s been a long hard slog but we think something is going to break soon!
Thanks again so much for your support.
Regards,
David
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!
—————————————————————
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
