Fund a Unique Cinematic Journey

I am a 74 year old image maker working with photography and video/cinema. This project will deal with time, place, landscape, transitions, translations, fact, fiction and self-definition concerning events surrounding my father's life. I will use a long-form structure, an introduction, four segments with transitions, and epilogue to tell this story.

My father's parents were married in 1920 near Bemidji, Minnesota. His mother was pregnant with another man's child at the time. His father had been in the army during WW1. The world was dealing with the results of the flu pandemic and war, northern Minnesota was rebuilding after the forest fires of 1918. My father was born in 1928, he had an older half-brother, brother and sister. His parents separated in 1929 and divorced in 1932. He, along with his brother and sister, went to the state school for abandoned and orphaned children in Owatonna as their father couldn’t care for them and their mother was deemed immoral and unfit by the state. He lived at the school until he enlisted in the Army and went to Japan and Korea.

This film/video will explore the world my father came into as well as the world he tried to define for himself and build for me.

I am seeking funding to cover costs of travel, research, photography, sound and video recording of locations, interviews over the next 18 - 24 months.