We don’t often feature crowdfunding notices here on Bold as Love, but when it comes from two filmmakers whose skills, sentiment, and knowledge come from a combination of righteousness and creativity, the normal way of doing business changes.
Christine Acham and Clifford Ward are the directors of a new and timely documentary that strikes at the center of the violence notoriously affecting Chicago for the past few years. To be told in a nuanced fashion, A Dream Dispersed shares the stories of various people living and working towards stemming the violence in inner-city Chicago – and it will be told in their own words, unlike the media driven narratives seen thus far.
But to make this happen, they need the support of the public to raise funds for the film.
As stated on their IndieGogo crowdfunding page, “The project will be filmed over one year beginning this summer and will follow a youth program, which mentors “at risk” youth in some of the most troubled neighborhoods,” specifically two local Chicago community groups: YAP Chicago and the Near West Side Community Development Corporation. Acham states how, “we are making sure that it is a very community based film,” one they will use for “education and advocacy purposes within the Chicago communities.”
Separating fact from fiction is the cornerstone of the filmmaking and real-life couple’s previous documentary, Infiltrating Hollywood: The Rise and Fall of The Spook Who Sat by the Door. The award-winning film, also set in Chicago, featured Spook novel and screenplay writer Sam Greenlee, who navigates the history of the obstacles that went into the making of the landmark revolutionary film, expanded by interviews with various cast, crew, and film historians.
Their new film’s connection to real people’s perspectives mirror the seldom-seen “from the streets” reactions to police violence against Black people that surface in social media and some newscast videos, which counter the antiseptic calls against insurrection for a system aiming to destroy the populace. It also counters those with well intentions who as outsiders may be disconnected to this particular community’s concerns.
The aim is to eventually push the film into theaters so that it can be seen by more than those at film festivals and in the educational circuit.
As the directors also shared, this past April auteur director Spike Lee (Do the Right Thing, Red Hook Summer) announced his newest film entitled Chiraq, a combination of “Chicago” and “Iraq” coined by Chicago-based local hip-hop artists in reference to the violence of the city. Though Lee is not wont to do so, many locals fear that his very appropriation of the term indicates that he will create a film that misrepresents black youth and violence in the inner city film – a dynamic they are all to used to from outsiders.
As Ward hails from Chicago, his connections are the primary conduits to the families and community workers who will lend a valid perspective.
Check out their crowdfunding page and video below and share the valuable information Acham and Ward are working to get across.
