Land of Opportunity
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Images
Al Aubry, Urban Gardener
Tr'vel Lyons, Displaced Resident
Andres Duany, Urban Planner
Kawana Jasper, Public Housing Resident/Activist
Vanessa Gueringer, Community Activist
Marcio P. Immigrant Worker
Elza F., Immigrant Worker
Sharon Jasper, Public Housing Resident/Activist
Website
http://www.landofopportunitymovie.com
Topics
Economy: Debt
Environment: Environmental Activism
Human Development: Agriculture, Emergency Relief, Labor, Land, Migration, Poverty, Shelter & Housing, Social Exclusion, Urban, Youth
Human Rights: Civil Rights, Race Politics, Social Exclusion
Information & Media: Culture
Politics: Activism, Civil Society, Corruption & Transparency, Democracy, Globalization
Project Geography
US: National, Louisiana
International: South America
Identity Niches
African American, Caucasian, Latino, Women, Youth/Teen
Budget
Raised to date: $337,587.00
Estimate to complete: $171,570.00
Total Estimated Budget: $509,157.00
The budget numbers above are accurate as of 06/01/2011
Status
Distribution
Media Type
Video
Project End Use
Other: tv, web, mobile devices,
Key Personnel
Luisa Dantas
Producer/Director/Editor
Luisa Dantas has worked in film and television production as a writer, director and producer on a wide-range of different projects from short films and documentaries to pre-school television programs in both her native Brazil and the U.S.. She pursues documentary filmmaking in order to meld art with social justice. She co-produced the acclaimed documentary, Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price. She also directed and produced the web-series Voices From the Gulf, for Color of Change. St. Joe, Luisa’s experimental short video about the demolition of public housing in New Orleans, recently won Best Short at the New Orleans International Human Rights Film Festival.
In addition to her documentary work, Luisa is a screenwriter and director of narrative films. Luisa’s first film, Bolo, was produced and shot in Brazil, and screened in several international festivals. She also received a grant from Disney/ABC to develop a Summertime, a screenplay about a young Latina coming of age at an exclusive New York private school. She has also a written for the pre-school series Go, Diego, Go! for Nickelodeon Television. Luisa is currently adapting the book Desire Street, by Pulitzer-prize winning author Jed Horne, into a screenplay. Luisa received her B.A. in English and Latin American studies from Brown University. She also received an M.F.A in Film from Columbia University.
Rebecca Snedeker
Co-Producer
Rebecca Snedeker is an award-winning independent documentary filmmaker whose work supports human rights, creative expression and her native city, New Orleans. Her directorial debut, By Invitation Only (2006), premiered at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and screened at festivals, conferences and PBS stations nationwide. Currently, she is co-producing Land of Opportunity and producing Choices, featuring Terence Blanchard and Dr. Cornel West, and Siskel/Jacobs Productions’ Witness: Katrina (National Geographic Channel, 2010). As Archival Researcher and/or Associate Producer, she has contributed to numerous documentaries including A Village Called Versailles (Independent Lens, 2010) and Faubourg Treme: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans (National PBS Broadcast, 2007). Snedeker serves on the boards of the New Orleans Film Society, Patois: the New Orleans International Human Rights Film Festival and Video Veracity, a fiscal agent for independent media projects. She is an active member of New Day Films, the filmmaker-owned distribution company, and a Visiting Scholar at Newcomb College Center for Research on Women at Tulane University. Snedeker received her B.A. in Fine Arts from Wesleyan University.
Chicken and Egg Pictures (Judith Helfand, Wendy Ettinger, Julie Benello)
Executive Producers
Aggregating over twenty years of collective expertise as producers, mentors, social-justice donors, advocates and practitioners of rigorous impact-driven audience engagement campaigns, Julie Parker-Benello, Wendy Ettinger and Judith Helfand co-founded Chicken and Egg Pictures in 2005. Themselves award-winning non-fiction producers/directors (The War Room/’93, A Healthy Baby Girl/’97, Blue Vinyl/’02, Everything’s Cool/’07, Hotel Gramercy Park/’08) they came together to create this responsive and dynamic venture.
Outreach/Engagement Plan(s)
As cities all over the world struggle to recover from disaster, whether economic, natural or man-made, we believe that the lessons of post-Katrina New Orleans have only become more urgent. We want to utilize the diverse stories we’ve captured to galvanize and educate urban America around the core urban issues of affordable housing, urban redevelopment/planning, immigration reform and economic displacement. We aim to inspire nuanced discussions and support the work of organizations that cut across single-issue frameworks to build a broad-based and multi-racial movement for urban spatial justice. The strategic partnerships with community, educational, media and data organizations that we create in each of our target cities are crucial for outreach and engagement for our content across platforms. We have already cemented relationships with several national and local organizations that work on the core urban issues explored in LAND OF OPPORTUNITY, including Policylink, GNOFHAC, Jobs With Justice, Just Cause, US Human Rights Network, New Orleans and Detroit Workers Centers, Brave New Films, Cuéntame, and National Black Public Media, to name a few. These groups and non-profits have guided and helped to distribute our content from the inception of the project.
To maximize the project’s impact, we seek to achieve four main goals in 2011-12:
1. Produce and distribute interactive webisodes in conjunction with strategic partners in target cities.
2. Produce community and educational versions of the DVD of the feature film with accompanying screening and educational materials.
3. Stage community screening events (“Happenings”) of the feature film in target cities.
4. Pursue opportunities to catalogue and archive our unique footage collection online so that it can be accessed by advocates, educators and mediamakers around the world.
Funders
| Name | Amount | Date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Individual Donors (Kickstarter Campaign) | $28,000.00 | 05/01/2010 | |
| Arte | $129,087.00 | 10/01/2009 | |
| Ford Foundation | $10,000.00 | 08/01/2009 | |
| New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation | $1,500.00 | 03/01/2009 | |
| Chicken and Egg Pictures/Tides Foundation | $15,000.00 | 02/01/2009 | |
| Rockefeller Foundation | $50,000.00 | 04/01/2008 | |
| RHI Films | $6,000.00 | 01/01/2008 | |
| Dakota Group | $10,000.00 | 11/01/2007 | |
| Chicken and Egg Pictures/Tides Foundation | $10,000.00 | 10/01/2007 | |
| New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation | $2,000.00 | 07/01/2007 | |
| Individual Donors | $10,000.00 | 05/01/2007 | |
| Producers Cash | $94,000.00 | 07/01/2006 |
Location
1300 St. Claude Avenue
New Orleans, LA, 70116
Short Synopsis
From front porches to the frontlines, LAND OF OPPORTUNITY captures the struggle to rebuild New Orleans, one of America’s most beloved and emblematic cities. Juxtaposing the perspectives of protagonists from different walks of life, from urban planners to immigrant workers to public housing residents, this multiplatform documentary project reveals how the story of post-Katrina New Orleans is also the story of urban America.
Description/Treatment
LAND OF OPPORTUNITY asks the question: What kind of cities do we want to inhabit in the 21st century? Through the eyes of urban planners, displaced residents, undocumented immigrant workers, developers, community activists, artists and public housing residents this question is asked, answered and asked again. But this not just a situation that is happening somewhere else and to someone else, as our tagline points out: it’s “happening to a city near you”. This multiplatform documentary project reveals how the story of post-Katrina New Orleans is also the story of urban America. The story of how democratic processes can fail us, how economic crisis can pull the rug out from under us, and how migration and displacement can prove to be complicated bargains. This is a ground-level view of a situation that has been widely discussed but rarely seen with such texture and complexity. Encompassing 1500 hours of footage filmed over five years, our multi-platform elements include a feature-length film for broadcast and interactive “webisodes” produced and distributed with a broad spectrum of social justice and media partners.
Interactive Webisodes: A key component of the LAND OF OPPORTUNITY project is the production and distribution of interactive web-based videos designed to engage and educate viewers on core urban issues of affordable housing, urban redevelopment/planning, (im)migration and economic displacement. We are seeking funding to develop and build an open-source interactive web player for our video content that provides access to an ever-expanding content-rich environment that amplifies and contextualizes the storylines and issues we explore. The goal is to create a multi-dimensional story space that will increase engagement and inspire action. The interactive nature of these webisodes will allow users to relate the stories of post-Katrina New Orleans to what is happening in their own backyards. We have partnered with the prestigious Mozilla Foundation’s WebMadeMovies initiative to create the Land of Opportunity interactive web player.
Feature Film: Our feature film follows eight protagonists (an urban planner, public housing residents/activists, a community organizer, a displaced teenager, an urban gardener and Brazilian immigrant workers) through the early years of the reconstruction of New Orleans. The European version of the feature film was broadcast via Arte in France and Germany on the 5th Anniversary of Katrina in August 2010, to strong ratings and reviews that emphasized the complexity and nuance of the interwoven storylines. We recently finished editing the domestic/festival version of the film, which we are submitting to domestic and international film festivals and to domestic broadcasters. The festival version recently screened at the It's All True Festival in Brasil. This version will comprise the official community/home use DVD with Spanish subtitles. Please see audience outreach/engagement plans below.
Footage Archive: The footage we amassed for LAND OF OPPORTUNITY is a unique document of an unprecedented time in our history from a rarely seen multiplicity of perspectives. It is a valuable tool for the various modalities of research and education that are shaping urban policy and thinking in the 21st century. Thus, the final element of our outreach and engagement strategy is to preserve and catalogue our footage archive in a way that ensures maximum access to educators, students, researchers and mediamakers. We are pursuing partnerships with local and national entities that have the infrastructure and ability to create such a digital archive.
Click here to ask for more information about this project: