Send H.S. film students to Nepal

Please help send 11 high school film students to Nepal to make a documentary film about building sustainable housing for a remote village before the winter sets in!

My name is Patricia Estrin and I, along with Kimberly Messadieh, run a film program, Careers In Entertainment Academy, at El Camino Real Charter High School in Woodland Hills, California.  Our students have won film festivals locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally.  We have been winners at NFFTY the past three years, and have taken top awards four years in a row at the Los Angeles Student Film Festival.  This year we had the immense honor of having four of our films chosen for the Short Film Corner at the Cannes Film Festival in France.   

We are extremely grateful for the recognition our students have received for their narrative films,  but we feel a great responsibility to insure that we are raising socially aware, morally responsible filmmakers who are aware of the power film. can possess.   We encourage them to use the art form to educate and to incite audiences to want to make the world a better place.  To make a difference!  

To this end, last year we began our documentary film division, under Ms. Messadieh and our Broadcast Journalism program.  We now have an extraordinary opportunity to send our students to Nepal with an experienced documentary filmmaker who is working with Earthbag, a sustainable housing project, to build housing for the Nepalese in Dupi Surkhe in Okhaldhunga District, a remote area that has been completely devastated by the earthquake.  If they cannot get housing by winter, they will not be able to survive.  

This is a chance for our students to film and participate in a truly life altering experience.  They will be able to document what can happen when people, despite extreme challenges, come together to affect positive change. To save lives. We can train our students with keen technical skills and nurture their artistic talent, but it is only by broadening their world vision that they will truly find their voices as filmmakers.  

The students will be in Nepal for 2 weeks.  They will fly into Kathmandu, Nepal, then trek for 2 days to the village where they will be living and filming.  This is not a luxury, sight-seeing trip.  Conditions will be harsh and they will be living in tents, working and filming side by side with the Earthbag contingent and the natives.  Ms. Messadieh will accompany the students and will supervise the filming. The students are skilled, talented, and responsible filmmakers.  They will create a fantastic documentary if given the chance. 

We need approximately $15,000.00 for airfare for the students.  Students will take care of their own supplies, Earthbag and the Nepalese will furnish the tents, food and sherpas.  Our program will furnish the filming equipment.

We could not afford to send our Cannes selected filmmakers to France, so they forfeited that experience.  Please contribute to ensure that they do not miss this once in a life opportunity.

With great hope,

Patricia Estrin and Kimberly Messadieh