Summer of Sell: A tale of passion and protest in the historic movement that changed baseball.
Embark on a captivating journey with us through “Summer of Sell,” a compelling documentary that delves into an extraordinary clash between the devoted fan base of the Oakland Athletics and the team’s owner. This film will be capturing the ongoing feud that erupted when the owner’s intentions to relocate the team to Las Vegas clashed head-on with the unwavering passion of the fans in Oakland.
In an unprecedented display of grassroots solidarity, the Oakland fans have orchestrated a resounding protest against the ownership’s decision. The Summer of Sell, as this historic movement has come to be known, reverberated across the league, standing as a remarkable testament to the power of collective action. This documentary not only chronicles the evolution of this movement but aims to become an integral part of it, amplifying the voices of these dedicated fans.
Our approach involves an array of dynamic mediums to extend the reach of this movement. Through compelling social media campaigns and amplifying our message across podcasts, sports articles and TV newscasts, we intend to further elevate the fervor of this fan base. By shining a spotlight on their passion, we look to inspire change within ownership and Major League Baseball itself, urging them to reconsider the prospect of keeping the beloved Oakland team right where it belongs.
However, “Summer of Sell” isn’t just a tale of sports fans; it’s a story created by sports fans. As a lifelong Oakland A’s fan, I intimately understand that the game is so much more than just entertainment – it’s an emotion, a connection, a way of life. Through this documentary, we aim to peel back the layers of what it means to be a devoted fan, revealing how victories and defeats hold the power to shape our days. The bonds formed over this shared love for the game run deep, bringing friends and families together with a common purpose.
The game isn’t just a sport; it’s a vital thread in the fabric of our lives, and for the A’s, an integral part of the city’s identity. We aim to show how Oakland has always been a hotbed of rebellion and social uprisings, including the Black Panthers, the Anti War movement and the BLM protests. And now that same fighting mentality is being applied to Oakland’s last remaining sports franchise.
As well as being a life long A’s fan, I have over ten years of experience telling documentary stories, most recently working on the documentary, “Reggie” as well as the documentary series “They Call Me Magic”. Collaborating with me is a seasoned team with an extensive portfolio of over two dozen documentary films and TV shows. Notably, John Henion, who executive produced “Welcome to Wrexham,” is our Executive Producer.
From the project’s inception, our aim was to secure financing from a sports film company. However, we’ve encountered a stumbling block, as companies have been hesitant to back a documentary that could potentially infringe upon the interests of MLB and its owners. But time is of the essence. The critical point now is to capture footage while there is still momentum in this movement, especially since the baseball season concludes within this month, culminating with the final Oakland home game on September 24th.
Consequently, we are turning to crowdfunding to enable us to document the fan base during the ongoing season. Our plan is to conduct our initial shoot between September 20th and 24th, during which we will follow some die hard Oakland A’s fans, who have made it their goal to start one of the most historic movements in sports, with the Summer of Sell. We will see how the game is more than just a hobby, it’s a major part of their lives, intertwined in their friendships, their families and their communities.
We then plan to shoot in Anaheim for the last series of the season, where a lot of those fans will be coming down to continue to spread the Summer of Sell movement as they have been for the last few months. We will most likely still need a couple more shoots over the next couple months and then will head into post production to piece the story together.
Our initial objective is to secure the necessary funds for our inaugural shoot, so our first goal is $33k for a five day shoot. However, the greater the funds we accumulate, the more we can sustainably support this project in the upcoming months. For another $17k we could shoot the entire final series against Anaheim. And for $100k we could shoot the rest of the project over the coming months. Post production, which can be the most expensive part of a documentary, will most likely cost another $400k, making the total around $550k.
The more we bring in from this campaign, the less our dependence on companies that might attempt to steer the project’s direction in an alternate way. We want this film to be an uncensored look at this passionate fanbase and the movement they have created, so please help us in reaching those goals. And even if we fail to get our $33k, your contributions will still be invaluable as we will use the money to shoot during that week, but with a scaled back production.
You can also contribute by helping us spread the message. This movement originated from the dedicated efforts of passionate fans who shared their ideas and organized events solely through word of mouth on platforms like Facebook and Twitter. We too, kindly ask you to share our campaign to raise awareness of our important project (You can use the Indiegogo tools to easily share the campaign on any social media platform)
In our pursuit to involve the audience actively in this movement, our aim is twofold: not only do we intend to maintain the engagement of our existing fan base with developments related to the film and the movement, but we also seek to create an online platform. This platform will serve as a hub for individuals to share their captured videos, photographs, and personal anecdotes, allowing us to harness the authentic enthusiasm that people have been documenting over the past year.
Additionally, we are committed to keeping our funding team well-informed. To achieve this, we will establish a communication channel through a blog page on our website. Through this, all members of our funding team will have the opportunity to participate and stay updated on the progress made and the various narrative directions being explored.
Join us on this compelling journey as we delve into the heart of this team, its devoted fan base, and the city that fuels its spirit. “Summer of Sell” is more than a documentary – it’s a tribute to the unbreakable bonds that connect us through the love of a game, and a call to action to preserve what truly matters. Let’s come together as a team to not just make a documentary that tells your story, but to play a part in keeping the A’s Rooted in Oakland.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart,
Gabriel Cullen
OG*
(*The Right Side of History/Wrong Side of the Law) is a feature documentary about the OGs of the Emerald Triangle – the hippies, the hustlers, the activists, and yes, the outlaws, who created the marijuana business. Today, marijuana is entrenched in our culture – we smoke it, we ingest it, and we take it for grant. But the real story of how it all happened has never been told…until now.
The Emerald Triangle OGs changed our world with their weed and fought the war against drugs, so we could all take marijuana for granted. They lived a life most of us could never imagine, and they are finally going to break their wall of secrecy to tell us their unbelievable stories – the hopes, the craziness, the heart – and what it’s really like to be on the right side of history, but the wrong side of the law.
The system that protects our children is broken. As a nation we are failing. We have lost empathy, and the result is fatal. Firearms are now the leading cause of death for children in the United States. This film has a simple mission: to increase our collective empathy. It is a starting point for a much larger conversation. Rather than focusing on the topics that divide us, we seek to unite our audience around common ground: our central need to love and protect our children.
THE BIG PICTURE (TBP) is a documentary feature that seeks to illuminate the critical role community movie theaters play in social cohesion by fostering feelings of togetherness, similarity, and cooperation. It follows the struggle of the residents of Belfast, ME, as they seek to wrest their treasured theater away from closure and create a community art center. Interwoven with this story will be the story of the Coolidge Corner Theater in Brookline, MA, which was rescued from destruction in 1989 by one of the most dynamic nonprofit fundraising events in the area’s history, as well as a deep look into the neuroscience behind shared experiences and their effect on human behavior.
Birds of Massachusetts is a narrative feature film based on the novella of the same name. Produced by Emmy-nominated People People Media and VAGRANTS. Slated for production fall of 2023.
SYNOPSIS:
Told across three seasons, Birds of Massachusetts is a dual portrait of unlikely companions. Mark is paid to keep Donna company, though given her deteriorating memory, he must re-establish and re-introduce himself daily. Mark is new to the North Shore, having moved from the West Coast after college. Despite his best attempts, he’s aimless and unable to find connection with anyone in this unfamiliar, beautiful place. So he spends his time watching after Donna, whose dementia seems to worsen with each passing season. Though the two seem to be different in almost every way, together they find beauty in the moments of quiet stillness, shared laughter, and fragmented memories of a long life in the same place.
ABOUT:
This story was heavily inspired by the real-life experience of author Steven Kennedy, who worked as a care partner with an older woman affected by dementia. Our proximity to this issue has only expanded our compassion for it. This disease not only impacts the person whose mind is deteriorating, it impacts their care partner. And the number of those diagnosed is projected to triple by 2050. Many films made about dementia get it wrong — when Hollywood attempts to portray affected folks, it’s either offensive given the disease is played for horror, or it misses the mark because the film glosses over / glamorizes the issue. Writers not familiar with the disease tend to reduce it to a device in service of their preconceived plot. We as filmmakers exist to fight against reductive filmmaking. Thus far, we’ve partnered with organizations like Alzheimer’s San Diego and Glenner Alzheimer’s Family Centers who have graciously agreed to be a resource and advisory presence throughout the process. Upon the film’s release, we’ll be organizing community screening / Q&A discussion events with Alzheimer’s nonprofits across the country to generate awareness.
Our greatest hope is to make a heartwarming, life-affirming film — one that authentically represents the day-to-day realities of not only living with dementia, but living with a loved one affected by it. Humanizing the disease through quality storytelling is a good place to start.
Filmmaker Joshua Koszewski uses his background as a U.S. Army Sniper to explore the growing gap between Civilian and military culture and how institutions create, enable, and exploit Veteran stereotypes, including fellow Veterans.
Tis of Thee is a feature-length essay documentary with comedic elements. In this film, we will explore the concept that when Veterans double down on military culture, they feed negative stereotypes that create unintended societal consequences and, in turn, harm Veteran to Civilian transition as a whole. We will interview leading academics in Veteran Studies with expertise in media representation, Veteran identity, political landscape, and corporations. All the while, we will use unscripted social experiments to bring home our message through comedy.
We talk or laugh about aging; it’s irritations and relentless progression, but we rarely confront the reality of dying or being left alone. Nor do we consider the lightness and calmness that can come when the success race seems not so crucial.
The film is about all those things and, finally, about the pleasures of being alive. Filmmaker Ralph Arlyck tries to convey how it feels to be seeing the winding down of your life. He spends time with older friends from his past and present, most of them rather lively, plus children and grandchildren.
Woven in with these scenes are personal reflections on the challenges of getting old; of feeling your joints and thoughts stiffen, as the camera confronts – both seriously and humorously — the obstacles that loom up in front of anyone who is on the last lap. The tone of the film isn’t sad; more wistful.
The title’s declaration has a double meaning. The “here” that the filmmaker likes is both his immediate rural surroundings (the fields, water and neighbors he sees out his window) – and life itself.
Albert Corado grew up in Los Angeles raised by his parents who emigrated to the United States from El Salvador. Albert spent many years working as a barista in the city until Mely’s death awakened his political drive. After becoming deeply engaged with his local activist community, Albert sets his sights on the politicians who apologized for the LAPD after his sister’s death. What better way to engage with your local politicians than to run to unseat them?
As the only police abolitionist in the race, Albert’s strategies are unconventional at best, cursing at cops from upscale Hollywood debate stages and promising to “roast marshmallows on burning precincts.” The scope of his campaign illuminates questions that get to the center of local city politics: Who is allowed political speech? What kind of speech is encouraged? Who does it serve to ignore the voices most affected by the failings of our society?
At Albert’s side and a cofounder of the People’s City Council, Ricci Sergienko, is an abolitionist that has helped re-popularize an old form of activism in LA, “birddogging.” This causes some of LA’s most powerful social leaders – like Sheriff Alejandro Villanueva and mayoral candidate Rick Caruso – to take out Facebook ads to demonize him.
A friend and supporter of Albert and the People’s City Council, William Gube, known as @FilmThePoliceLA to his tens of thousands of followers on twitter, spends nearly every night on the streets of Hollywood, listening to police scanners and rushing to nearby police stops to film. He knows nearly every cop in the Hollywood precinct by name because he has filed hundreds of complaints against every one of them.
Throughout the film, our characters rally around Albert’s political campaign, attempting to influence LA politics towards their abolitionist mission.
The campaign, unapologetic in its rhetoric and hatred for LAPD, makes big waves in the race, but ultimately fails to make it past the primary. In the reflection of this failure, Albert and our characters are forced to reevaluate tactics. Do they acquiesce to the critics’ tone-policing of their anger or double down on their hatred of the world they desperately want to change?
No Peace will attempt to tackle structural questions with the criminal justice system in the United States through deeply personal vignettes of three characters working to change it.
This project is 2 years into filming. We intend to film for approximately 1 year more to follow Albert’s evolution as a political actor, the relationships between our characters, the status of police reform following the upcoming election, and engage with expert interviews to further analyze the ideology of police abolition as well as the use of social media in the political sphere of Los Angeles.
Pauline Boty (1938-1966) is one of the most important British artists of the 20th Century — a trailblazer in Pop Art and the burgeoning feminism movement of the 1960’s.
Within her art she analysed, subverted and skewered pop culture and major political events, while questioning the established roles of women in mass culture. Included within her paintings and collages are many of the most famous people and events of that time, such as Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, Christine Keeler, the JFK assassination and the Cuba crisis, amongst many others.
Asked why she did this, Boty replied that is because Pop Art is ‘Nostalgia for now…’
Tragically, Boty’s life was cut short at the age of 28 after she was diagnosed with cancer soon after becoming pregnant. Instead of receiving potentially life-saving treatment, Boty chose to keep her baby and died 5 months after her daughter was born.
For the next 25+ years, Boty’s contributions to British Pop, early feminism and 1960’s London were nearly forgotten. Her paintings were locked away at her brother’s farm in Kent.
Only in the 1990s, thanks to the work of art historians such as David Alan Mellor and Dr. Sue Tate, did the art world start to properly appreciate Boty’s contributions to the British Pop movement and how she sought to change the way women are perceived in society.
Boty’s art stands shoulder to shoulder with any produced in London from 1960-1966, and for that reason alone a brighter light should be shone on to the story of her short life and magnificent art. If ever there was a case of ‘what might have been’ it can be applied to the painter Pauline Boty. Now is the right time for her full story to be told.
BrainStorm the Film will transform the landscape around bipolar as we know it. Our goal is to end the stigma, save lives, and maximize health for the millions of people with brains on the bipolar spectrum – and all those who love them.
BrainStorm the Film is an unprecedented initiative that combines inspiring stories of people with lived experience of bipolar, cutting-edge science, and breakthrough treatments in one coherent narrative. It tells a story of hope, substance, and beauty. The film will give viewers new knowledge and power to create real change in their lives: to go from devastation and despair to health and vitality.
The word ‘bipolar’ conjures up images of wild highs, delusions, all-night sprees, and sudden mood crashes. But this manic-depressive behavior, also known as bipolar I disorder, exists only at one extreme end of what we now know as the ‘bipolar spectrum.’ People whose brains fall elsewhere on the bipolar spectrum — bipolar II and others — experience severe, life-threatening depression, but do not exhibit classic mania.
Yes, bipolar without mania does exist. And since bipolar II depression can look so much like classic depression, misdiagnosis is rampant. One out of three people who are diagnosed with depression actually have a bipolar brain – and the antidepressant drugs they are prescribed can lead to dangerous and even lethal consequences.
On average, it takes over 11 years for patients to get a correct diagnosis of bipolar II. In the meantime, they are suffering and dying. They are among the addicted, the incarcerated, the homeless, the suicidal. People with bipolar II are twice as likely to take their own lives as those with classic depression. They are our friends and our family.
Yet it does not have to end this way. As celebrities such as Catherine Zeta Jones and Selena Gomez, as well as heroes like Major General Gregg Martin, can attest, it is possible to live a long, successful life with a bipolar diagnosis. BrainStorm the Film will feature inspiring people living with bipolar –celebrities, physicians, entrepreneurs, military generals, Shark Tank millionaires, and more — who are leading rich and fulfilling lives. Their stories provide inspiration and hope while erasing stigma and shame.
With knowledge crucial for correct diagnosis, treatment, and recovery, BrainStorm the Film will save lives by expanding awareness of the bipolar spectrum and demonstrate how the right treatments can allow every person with bipolar to unlock their fullest potential and thrive.
Please join us in this important mission!
