I am happy to announce that the T-shirt Travels website is finally operational. Please check it out at www. tshirttravels.com
Also I wanted to share with you the latest on what has been happening with the documentary, that many of you know, as been such a large part of my life for the last four years. Just to recap , last January after an intensive weekend orientation with ITVS, an arm of public television,in San Francisco, I signed an agreement with them in which they gave me the money to pay for the expensive parts of TV production such as the sound mix, color correct, and music rights, in return they now have the rights for US broadcast on public television. It was not until May when I was able to deliver the finished product to them. Thankfully Anna Backer, the talented cinematographer, acted as the online producer. Despite her pregnancy, she patiently organized what become a drawn out couple of months, supervising the online and helping out with a number of technical problems that seem unavoidable in any production of this type.
The first festival screening was at Atlanta Film Festival, which I was fortunate enough to attend in June. A great opportunity to catch up with my second cousin, John Roeser who escorted me to the screening and was there when T-shirt Travels won the best documentary. It was indeed an exciting moment. Since then, T-shirt Travels has screened at Zanzibar Film Festival, where it won Chairman’s Award, Vermont Festival, where it also one prize for the best human rights documentary, and the Vancouver Festival. I also held a screening down at the Screening Room in New York. It opened at the Canadian One World Festival and in the next couple of months, will screen in Seattle, Monterary, Buenos Aires, and next week at Columbia University.
As for broadcast possibilities, although T-shirt Travels did not receive a national airdate on PBS, it will be distributed to the many PBS affiliate stations this June. Yes, I know this sounds like forever… but I am at least relieved the film may get a broadcast date. Internationally, I am still working on finding an international distributor. The independent distribution seen is facing tough times so I may have to resort to approaching individual broadcasters and keep the fingers crossed.
There is not doubt that the documentary is more relevant now as the debt debate has grown louder and louder, and more people keep on realizing that the current form of globalisation, which assumes that the free market will be able to solve all of the world's problems, is not working. Significant gains in debt relief have been made, but they are hardly enough. Sub Sahara Africa still pays a billion dollars a month in debt servicing while an estimated 7000 people die of AIDS a day. And the prospects of an increase in foreign aid levels to the UN prescribed 0.7 percent of a country’s GNP still seem remote. Most countries give far less, including the US as the stingiest of all the OECD countries, gives less than one quarter of one percent, a decrease of an eighth in the last twenty five years. Indeed, development assistance to Africa has decreased from 19 billion dollars to just12 billion this year, a far cry from the type of Marshall Plan, Africa needs.
And as for Luka and many of my Zambian friends, life continues to get harder. In the two years since I have been there, the value of the currency has fallen even further. When I first arrived in Zambia it was 700 Kwatcha for the dollar, now it ovr 4000 up from 2500 since we shot the documentary in 1999. There are food shortages and on top of that Zambia is now hosting more than 270,000 refugees fleeing the fighting in Angola and DRC. Anna Backer has though been sending money for Luka’s family to go to school and to help them with the house, which is wonderful. Sadly though, there are no shortage of people in Luka’s situation, who are barely keeping their heads above water.
I have attached an article below written by Jon Jeter, Washington Post correspondent for Southern Africa, and a friend, that reflects many of the problems countries, like Zambia, face. And while it is easier to look at the failure of African leadership, without asking a deeper seated why, we will once again fail to find honest and workable solutions to create systems that make governments accountable to their people rather than the dicates of international finance.
Please don't hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions, distribution ideas, or would like to see a copy of the documentary, or share it with others. After so long in the making, I anxious for it to be seen. I believe we are at a juncture where we need to be brave enough to confront the global inequalities that we have created, rather than in fear, retreat behind closed walls, and wait for the inevitable chaos and violence that will follow.
Thanks again for all your continued support.
Kind regards,
Shantha Bloemen
Director/Producer
T-shirt Travels
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