my kickstarter reward for "Red Thread"!
Poetry, operatic music, and a tale of a strong woman and the choices she made, good, bad, and ugly.
I may not watch it often, but it is a stirring video.
It is also an award-winning film, having earned the New York State Council on the Arts Film and Media Grant. That enabled the team (Duston Spear, producer; Michael Minard, music composer; Ann Casapini, singer) to truly fine-tune the piece. That fine-tuning included a slight name change: "Red Thread: The Prisoner and The Painter".
I am so proud of them.
Thank You, also,
for a birthday gift
from beyond all time.
3 comments:
6 May 2013:
Dear Patient Backers- It's here!' Red Thread: the prisoner and the painter' is ready to be mailed to you. If anyone has moved since we started this process please update me with your address ( Dustonspear@gmail.com). Thanks to the NYSCA grant in Film and Media and additional funding from the Puffin Foundation we have a wonderful video.
Thank you again for your support!
Duston Spear
18 Oct 2013:
Duston, my apologies for the delay in responding. The film arrived safely and I have watched it and I am THRILLED with the results. Bravo to all of you for the dedication and hard work! My patience and faith have been well rewarded.
Thank you.
- fliss
6 December, 2013
Dear Supporters, Friends and Family,
IndiePix Films is going to release Red Thread: the prisoner and the painter on April 1, (2014) and they will handle the digital distribution. That leaves me with about 100 DVD's so Red Thread is going on the road- trying to bring a little more media attention to Judy Clark's ongoing internment. Next week I'm being interviewed by Corey Fischer-Hoffman on her Prison Voices Project on WGXC Community Radio (http://www.wgxc.org/), broadcast out of Hudson, New York.
The "Happening and a Performance" at Cage on the Lower East Side, in September, convinced Ann Casapini, the featured vocalist, and Michael Minard, the composer, that there might be a way to perform Red Thread live while it was being projected behind the musicians. If you know of a local venue that might be interested in this please shoot me an email and I'll get a press kit out to them.
A seven minute section from the film, the stop action animation for Judy's poem, 'For The Days When', was shown in October at the Film Anthology Archives, as part of Jana Leo's Festival. And it was an official selection of the Big Apple Film Festival in November.
Matthew Seig, my Media Advisor at the New York Foundation for the Arts, has been a big help with every step of this process. I am happy to announce that the NYFA will be the fiscal sponsor for the next film project, PAST.
PAST will be a series of 4 short films that deal with the nostalgia of racism. The first, "Uncle Tom was a White Lady', is in production and you can see an early version of that on Vimeo, (http://vimeo.com/70439091). Featuring two dancers, Andre Noel and Cynthia Fuller-Kling as Uncle Tom and Harriet Beecher Stowe, they use dance to tell their story of dependence and defiance. Filming for that segment will finish in January, 2014. Michael Minard is composing an original score.
I hope that you've enjoyed being a part of Red Thread. Crowdsourcing through Kickstarter made me feel like you all had my back and that was really encouraging. I want to find a different way to fund PAST - I will be opening my studio/barn up in Bedford with an online component on the website in February, selling artworks directly, at a significant reduction in price. PAST will also hold an 'open-rehearsal' where backers can watch the process of building the dance and costumes and art pieces, and participate in the discussion.
Thanks for taking time to catch up on Red Thread . I look forward to keeping you posted about the progress of PAST.
Have a very happy New Year!
Duston
Duston Spear
http://duston.spear.name
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