Dare Not Walk Alone Wins: Even though it didn't get the award

I know it sounds corny, but everyone who was at the 40th Annual NAACP Image Awards tonight was a winner. Never before have I experienced that much shared love in an auditorium full of people, never have I felt so much collective hope and joy.

(And never before have I witnessed a musical performance as moving as Jennifer Hudson singing "The Impossible Dream" to Muhammad Ali, but I digress.)

No, Dare Not Walk Alone did come away with the Image Award for Outstanding Documentary, but to be nominated and considered and embraced in such a way, this is a big win for the film as far as I'm concerned. I am sure there will be more screenings because of this, and an uptick in DVD sales.

On a personal level, I think the director Jeremy and I look just a little bit like zombies here at the after-party, wearing dazed grins on our pasty white faces in a mixture of sheer joy and disbelief that our "little" film had come so far. We had no star power and no marketing budget, yet we're here with fellow nominees from studio films like Cadillac Records, Miracle at St. Anna, The Secret Life of Bees and Seven Pounds. We're rubbing shoulders with stars from amazing shows such as The Wire, a TV epic that Jeremy and I both hold in highest esteem (and which got the same number of awards we did).

The personal and professional interest being shown in the film is genuine and real. People have sought us out and introduced themselves. Several studio executives have personally requested screeners of the film. We are pumped! And I think we will be able to carry that feeling through to a new push to get the film seen more widely than ever.

So Thank You NAACP, and happy HAPPY 100th BIRTHDAY
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"Trouble the Water" Gets Oscar Nod: Bravo Tia Lessin & Carl Deal

We were delighted to see that the Nominees for the 81st Academy Awards recognized the film “Trouble the Water” from Zeitgeist Films in the category of "Best documentary feature." The work of Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, this impressive documentary, which won a Grand Jury prize at Sundance 2008, presents "a unique, ground-level perspective on Hurricane Katrina that's been sorely missing from previous accounts of the disaster" (Roger Ebert).

Some people might feel like Hurricane Katrina is old news, but you would only think that if you had never experienced a hurricane or The South. Having experienced both, I think it is hard to overstate the importance of this cataclysmic event in America history, particularly Black American History. In many ways it was a turning point.

One reason I say this: our own documentary, Dare Not Walk Alone, might never have achieved theatrical release, were it not for Katrina. The reason? A lot of people who saw Dare Not Walk Alone before Katrina thought we were exaggerating the racial and social injustice we had documented in Florida.

While it is true that a documentary film maker can do that, choose the images he or she includes in the film to overstate the case, that is not what Jeremy did when he made Dare Not Walk Alone. There was as a lot more Jeremy could have included in the film about how bad things were and still are, but the problem, pre-Katrina, was that "the truth" was known only to a segment of the American people, a segment to which few people listened and about whom, judging by our government's reaction to Katrina, few people cared. In other words, pre-Katrina, people thought Dare Not Walk Alone lacked objectivity. That made funding (which has been, and remains, a huge challenge for the film) hard to find.

What happened during and after Katrina is that the measure of "objective" changed. Americans outside The South--and those who had managed to live in the South without fully experiencing The South--saw the harsh and undeniable reality on their TV. This was both important and unprecedented in so many ways, not least of which is the huge outpouring of support and aid that came from "regular" Americans, locally and nationally.

I don't think it is a stretch to say that you could glimpse the possibility of a black president in the aftermath of Katrina. It was clear from the positive responses to this natural disaster that a critical mass of Americans felt that the storm victims were their peers, their fellow Americans, worthy of equal treatment in all aspects of American life. Equally clear is the fact that many Americans now reject as unrepresentative and unworthy, a government that does not care equally or enough--as measured by real world action--about all Americans.

However, just as the election of an African-American president does not mean the Beloved Community has now been achieved, the passage of time does not mean that the wounds of Katrina are healed. There is much work still to be done and "Trouble the Waters" is a powerful reminder of that. So we say Thank You to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for recognizing this film and Bravo to its makers.
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NAACP Image Award Nomination Information

Some more data on the NAACP Image Award nominations.
The award ceremony is on February 12 in Los Angeles.
Live television coverage is on FOX (check local listings).
Here's a handy list of the nominations.
Dare Not Walk Alone is nominated for Outstanding Documentary.

Dare Not Walk Alone Nominated for NAACP Image Award

We are honored and delighted to report that Dare Not Walk Alone has just been nominated for an NAACP Image Award, as reported in Variety today.

In this busy award season it is hard to think of an award nomination more significant for Dare Not Walk Alone than this one. This year the NAACP celebrates its 100th anniversary. And these are the 40th annual Image Awards. We are extremely grateful to the 40th NAACP Image Awards’ Nominating Committee for recognizing Dare Not Walk Alone in this way.

Dare Not Walk Alone is nominated in the documentary category, along with "The Black List" (HBO); "Black Magic" (ESPN); "CNN Presents: Black in America" (CNN); and "Trouble the Water" (Zeitgeist Films). We are honored to be competing with such prestigious programming.

We will be posting more on this development shortly. Right now we'd just like to thank all our supporters for having faith in this film, and express our thanks again to the NAACP nominating committee for shining a light on Dare Not Walk Alone.
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Dare Not Walk Alone DVD Pick of the Week

Thanks Columbus, Ohio!

When Dare Not Walk Alone played in Columbus last year it was an audience favorite and you gave us our first award.

And now that the DVD has been released, Dare Not Walk Alone is a Pick of the Week. We really appreciate your support and encouragement. The world needs to know: Columbus rocks!
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Dare Not Walk Alone and "Award-Winning"

We recently learned that Dare Not Walk Alone is now eligible for several awards. One of these is the 2009 Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking (that's their logo on the left).

Film awards serve many purposes, not least of which is acknowledging the years of struggle and heartache and effort and grit that go into getting a good film made. And believe us when we say that making a film these days takes all of these, even when you are being bankrolled by a studio or star. Want to make a serious film without financial backing and/or star power? Then count on the toil and sweat factor being multiplied many times over.

Thus far, DNWA has won one award: the Audience Award at the Deep Focus Film Festival in Columbus, Ohio. This might not sound like a big deal. You probably never even heard of it. But it meant a lot to us. For a start, it proved that the people who go to see DNWA appreciate the film. As you know, there have been some critics who have not [fully] appreciated the film. But we didn't make this film for the critics, we made it for the people. So winning an award voted on by the audience was like getting a whole bunch of hugs and thank you's (we have in fact received many hugs and thank you's when attending screenings, but we can't get to all the screenings).

However, the value of an award goes way beyond making the filmmaker feel good and reminding him or her that all the toil and sweat was not in vain. Awards help spread the word about a good film. Let's face it, there are loads of films out there these days (e.g. DNWA will be competing against close to 100 films for Cinema Eye Honors). And that makes it very hard just to get people to see your film, even if your film is very good and has a big budget.

Obviously we think DNWA is very good, but we know it has no budget (funny thing a budget, turns out that whatever money we could scrounge together was spent on making the film, and even then a lot of people worked for nothing, just because they believed that the story Jeremy was determined to tell, deserved to be told).

So you won't see ads for DNWA on FaceBook. You won't see DNWA as a featured [paid] video on YouTube. What you may see is the results a guerrilla marketing effort, led by those who support what DNWA is trying to achieve. This includes word-of-mouth, both physical and digital, with emails and link-swaps, and blog posts, and phone calls. Basically, the stuff that's free but takes effort. And we have racked up several thousand trailer views on YouTube, a very respectable rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and a solid IMDB score.

Awards add a lot to such efforts. You can bet that as soon as we won our first award we started referring to DNWA as an award-winning film. It's one more way to get your film noticed, and thus seen, and it's about as honest as marketing can get. So thanks to Cinema Eye for deeming DNWA eligible for an award. Whether it wins or not, every little bit of exposure helps spread the word and get more people to see the film.

Civil Rights Film Wins Festival Audience Award

Drumroll please...

Hushed silence...

"And the Audience Award for the Columbus, Ohio, 2007 Alive Deep Focus Film Festival goes to...envelope please...Dare Not Walk Alone."

Thank you, audience, thank you!

It is hard to express just how much your recognition means to us. Accolades from critics, from other filmmakers, these are wonderful things to have. But for a documentary about civil rights to scoop the audience vote, against some really tough competition, that truly makes the whole thing feel totally worth it.

We want to thank the festival sponsors and the organizers, especially Melissa Starker, for screening the film.

We would also like to thank all our supporters out there who have done so much over the last twelve months to promote awareness of this film. Your efforts are pushing us ever closer to making the film available to everyone.

After all, when a film comes out top in Columbus, you know there is a huge audience across America that is likely to feel the same way about it.

THANK YOU COLUMBUS!

p.s. We will be posting a picture of the award when we get it. And of course, we will be updating all of our fliers to say "Award Winning."