A girl with dissociative identity disorder, triggered by the incessant voices of her talking chicken handbag, embarks on a disturbing obsession with her favorite country singer.

Restorative Justice Narratives weaves a story of restorative justice across New England. Following Supreme Hassan in Boston (pictured above) and a high school boy in New York City, the film captures the struggle and healing that comes through restorative justice. Each found the space in their own way. Supreme led great change in Boston, and he also caused harm. Several decades ago, he sold drugs to people, was involved in someone’s murder. He only turned to face this harm in prison. At MCI-Norfolk in Massachusetts, Supreme began to work with prison officials and other people in prison to create space to bring together those who had caused violent crime with surrogate survivors of violent crime. This space brought healing to Supreme, to other people in prison, and to the surrogate survivors and their communities. Supreme followed restorative justice and brought transformation to the prison. He is no longer incarcerated, and now works to bring restorative justice to the world outside of MCI-Norfolk. Through this space, he faced his harm and found his path to walk.

The film will contrast Supreme’s story with the story of a young man who has only recently committed harm and is undergoing restorative justice processes. He is from New York City (just like Supreme), but is much earlier in his journey of facing his harm and of finding his path forward. The film will capture this young person at his crossroads and share Supreme’s story in parallel to show what can be possible. Interweaving these cross generational stories will showcase the power of restorative justice and push viewers to believe in and root for transformation they would not have thought possible.

Luke and Emma is a feature film about a young half-Asian boy navigating love and life as he comes-of-age in a conservative, religious Mid-Western American town in the 1980s. He and his classmate Emma have crushes on each other, but the society they live in makes it impossible for them to be together.

A fleet of boats, three dozen formerly incarcerated individuals, a handful of mentors – and three days of whitewater rapids. AMERICAN RIVER is a documentary film about what happens when, after years behind bars, you get the chance to do something unexpected, wild and free. 
 
This documentary short focuses on three people who have served long prison sentences and now find themselves way outside the confines of bars and barbed wire, navigating the Middle Fork of the American River. Some participants have been home 2 years, some 2 days. They are all members of the Anti-Recidivism Coalition (ARC) where diverse reentry programs include an annual weekend rafting trip. Many participants have never stepped foot in the wilderness when they opt in to three days of rapids. By throwing them far outside their comfort zones, the trip provides an exhilarating moment of freedom in nature that challenges participants in all ways while cultivating confidence, inspiring a new sense of what is possible, and potentially changing the course of a life. 

Former cellmates who haven’t seen each other in 20 years reconnect around the campfire. A young person whose record has been expunged meets a criminal justice advocate who lobbied to make it happen. Everyone is navigating the overwhelming challenges of returning home. Laced with the inherent tension and conflict of complicated pasts, the film documents the apprehension, fear, adrenaline, camaraderie, adventure, joy, and impact of this unique experience.
 
Almost half of all Americans will have a family member incarcerated at some point in their lives, with communities of color impacted disproportionately. Nearly 2 million people are behind bars at any given moment in the United States and when those sentences are completed and time is served, these individuals are released with little more than the clothes they entered in. Without crucial skills and resources to establish themselves, the cycle of recidivism continues. By engaging audiences in emotional stories of real people, American River opens the door for discussion about the American justice system and sparks engagement through empathy over politics.

“A walk with Richard” is an intimate portrait of a first- generation Japanese immigrant and restauranteur who firmly believes in “protecting” the customer, his business and his legacy. Richard landed in Vestal, NY in 1975 and opened Kampai, a Hibachi restaurant that same year.

Richard has always instilled the values of putting the customer first for over five decades and that legacy continues with his three children who now run the restaurant. Richard is retired but still pops in and out of Kampai to perform his rituals like cleaning the parking lot by-hand every morning before opening and closing out the last nights books. Our short film shares intimate moments with Richard and his family, illustrating what all of us in Vestal, NY have known about him for a long time. It is time to share his story with a larger audience and celebrate his legacy.

Waya is a short documentary about a Cuban “outsider” artist, Julian Espinosa Rebollido, that is in production. The project presents the artist, his work, views of peer artists and collectors to understand how this outsider has become part of the canon of 20th and 21st century Cuban art.

Julian Espinosa Rebollido is a Cuban “primitive/outsider” artist and local legend commonly known as Wayacón. While he has traveled all over Cuba and even served in the army during the Bay of Pigs, he has spent most of his life in the town of Remedios, Santa Clara where he lives in the home of his grandparents under the care of one of his sons. Surrounded by his dog, cat, chickens and his goat, his home is a living gallery of his art.

Over his life, Wayacón has made friends around the world who have helped his art be seen and appreciated despite the challenges of being an artist in a country stricken by widespread scarcity. His art has been sold in galleries and auctions internationally. He has received prizes and his work is part of national collections. He is not entirely aware just how far his art has traveled. He simply creates to live. 

The team enters the home and mind of the artist who director, Charles Abelmann, first met in 2013. The intent of the project is to leave a legacy of Wayacón’s thought through his work and his words with added narration of artists that can help a general audience appreciate his unique position as an outsider within the renowned Cuban art sphere. In order to set a context for the work, the team follows the fascinating cuban studies veteran, Sandra Levinson as she leads a tour centering Cuban art and culture. She has known Wayacón for over thirty years and helped him and many other artists get their work outside of Cuba as the Director for The Center for Cuban Studies. Through this lens, the viewer is exposed to Cuban art and culture deepening an understanding of the context of contemporary Cuban life. Wayacón greets new guests and his old friend, Sandra, exchanges that reveal how his sense of reality is sometimes as blended as the colors and mythical beings portrayed in his art. Interviews with people Wayacón has touched and depended upon reveal the pivotal life experiences that have influenced his work and his noteworthy role in the landscape of contemporary outsider art. While a film about an artist and his craft in a struggling Cuba, it is a story about the drive to create and connect revealing the complexity of the mind and heart. 

Projects like these depend on donations and grants to support our team, participants, and to complete the film. We are greatly appreciative of your tax deductible contributions.

 

Arthur Abelmann, born in 1888 in Latvia, had a passion for finding solutions to help people feel better. He went from being a chemist apothecary in a prisoner of war camp at the end of WWI to starting his own factory in Frankfurt to make medicinal tablets, known as Chemiwerk. By 1932, the company had over 200 employees. Its best-known products were Kamillosan and various other chamomile and naturally based preparations – Spirobismol, Transpulmin, and Treupel’sche Tabletten.

His dream of creating something for his son to take over went astray with the rise of Nazism and the banning of all Jewish Products and boycott of Jewish businesses. Arthur Abelmann resigned from his position and moved his family to Switzerland on the night before what is known as Boycott Saturday, April 1 1933. The company was purchased by Degussa and IG Farben, who dominated the chemical industry in Germany at the time. Abelmann passed away in 1934, and his wife and two children immigrated to the US in 1939. Degussa was tried at the Nuremberg Trials for the manufacturing of the poison gas Zyklon B and use of slave labor.

The film documents the early rise of Nazism in Frankfurt from 1932-1934 while Arthur Abelmann was working to keep his company intact. The film presents a multi-generational family history using first person original narrative, family photographs, writings, and artifacts combined with historic archival still and video images. The use of family archival materials along with the historical material shows the contrast of a thriving cultural Jewish life in Frankfurt and the arrival of the anti-Semitic Nazi regime. The film follows the development of Arthur from a young boy born in Riga, Latvia, to serving in WWI, building his company, getting married, and starting a family. The film shows his two loves, work and family, and how he worked to keep both safe and secure their future.

The film also uses the reflections of his son Walter who as a young boy watched his father do everything he could to survive and care for the family. We see the life of Arthur’s widow making the choice to leave Europe with her son, daughter, and elderly mother to start a new life in New York in 1939, and their early years of being in New York starting fresh while seeing the horrific headlines from their old home and the plight of those less fortunate. Throughout the years, the products of Arthur’s company survived, and between marketing and demand we see how one product, the healing ointment Kamillosan, endures over 100 years later.

Projects like these depend on donations and grants to support our team, participants, and to complete the film. We are greatly appreciative of your tax deductible contributions.

 
Mix Matched Socks” is a film about the turbulent, yet powerful relationship between a single mother and her only daughter.

Martha is saying goodbye to her daughter for what feels like forever. She is officially going to have an empty nest as Olivia is moving to the city for college. As a sendoff and to spend some much-needed quality time with her daughter, Martha packs their bags and books a stay at an apartment she found online (for a steal).

The two begin to clash when it comes to their romantic lives, Martha talks on the phone with her boyfriend and Olivia is flirting with Mark, the neighbor.

Martha begins to uncover some of Olivia’s secrets and must come to terms with the idea that her daughter is growing up in more ways than one.I am the first in my family to leave home for college. As a first-generation student and being the only child to a single mother, leaving was hard to put it simply. As I grew up, I came to the realization of just how scary and strange this big move was for my mom as well. She was going to be living alone for the first time in 18 years and her daughter was living in a completely different state. There are countless stories told from the perspective of a young adult flying the nest and the challenges they face as they learn to be on their on their for the first. I wanted to ask the question of how our parents deal with it. How do they change from this experience as they are equally transforming their lives along with ours? In this story, I wish to explore the complexities of a mother-and-daughter relationship through the lens of a mother. When you have a primary parent, they become more like a friend than a guardian at times. The film will tackle how those boundaries are pushed and how that affects the balance of the relationship.

 

Monster Slayer is a short documentary that tells the story of Stephanie “Monty” Montgomery’s journey in the aftermath of trauma, assault and stigma, through her gripping words and the animation of her visceral artwork and journal entries. 

In June 2018, Monty, the subject of our film, was raped at a strip club in Los Angeles where she worked. She told the management and the police, and neither party did anything. With no justice on the horizon, Monty the Monster Slayer, Monty’s ass-kicking artistic persona, took matters into her own hands and harnessed her art as a weapon against her assailant and the stigma she faced. Monty rented a billboard overlooking the scene of her assault to showcase a mural that casts her as a hero, slaying the “Monster” who raped her, and calling out the system for failing her. 

Through sharing her experience of assault along with the aftermath of injustice in both words and animation, we are able to innovatively expose abuses of power in a way that gives us access to what Monty saw, heard, and felt. There have been many animated documentaries before, but few animations were created by the main subject themselves.

In addition to all of this, the stakes addressed in Monster Slayer are high as the film questions preconceived notions about sex work, seeking to humanize and empower a community often ignored or vilified. Despite the recent #MeToo movement, the sex work community remains marginalized in discussions about sexual assault. Monty’s personal encounter with assault and the subsequent stigma she faced directly addresses the experiences of sex workers in the context of sexual assault, putting this crucial conversation at the forefront of the broader movement.

Eat Surf Love is a narrative short film that celebrates the beautiful awkwardness of human encounters. It’s a story about the resiliency we discover after we failed to catch the wave, didn’t get the job, or had zero return on a romantic investment. The film starts and ends with an audio podcast, and we view, in almost documentary fashion, two disparate people stumbling through a first conversation, and how, in revealing their vulnerabilities and aspirations, they change themselves and each other. Set in San Francisco, it’s also a love-hate letter to this paradoxical place, nudged between a bay and an ocean, where hearts have been left, lost, and also found.

WHAT WE NEED

Eat Surf Love is a low budget independent labor of love. We shot our film on our phones!  The film is now in post production. We are seeking finishing and marketing funds, to achieve the project’s potential.

FILMMAKERS AND PRODUCTION TEAM

Filmmaker Nada Djordjevich is an award-winning writer and social impact consultant, originally from the Bay Area, with degrees from Harvard and Berkeley. Her first short, California Pie (2022), has screened throughout the US and received multiple awards including two for “best animated film.”

Producer and First Assistant Camera, Mayra Padilla is a creative entrepreneur and communications professional, with proven results in brand management, social marketing, and event planning. A multilingual writer and storyteller, the documentary “To Sandy, from Sri Lanka “ was her first film.

CAST

Laura Yumi Snell  is a Japanese-American actress, pianist, singer, and co-founder of SoHo Shakespeare Company. Her works include Murakami Music (Symphony Space and US tour), Avenue Q (international tour), Richard III (SoHo Shakes), and the films “Carsick,” “Quarantine Horror Story”, and “Keiko’s Hands.”

Tyler Ritter was born in Los Angeles and after spending seven years abroad decided to move back to the (sometimes) sunny state. His most notable TV credits include The McCarthy’s, “Arrow,” “NCIS,” “Merry Happy Whatever,” “Homecoming,” and “Painkiller.”

Molly Wood is a longtime journalist and podcaster. She is the founder of Molly Wood Media, where she writes and podcasts about solutions to the climate crisis, advises companies on their climate messaging, and invests in climate tech companies. Eat Surf Love is her first film.

WHY SUPPORT US

HOW YOUR SUPPORT HELPS
Funding will enable high quality audio, music, sound and color-correction, along with closed-captions and subtitles to increase accessibility to diverse audiences. Funds will support festival entries and marketing materials (a trailer, poster, social media and other graphics) to create and sustain engagement. Your support for the emerging talent associated with this film helps create a foundation for new voices and films. The majority of our cast and crew are from groups underrepresented in films, and, for 30% of our team, this was their very first film.

Eat Surf Love is a micro-budget production, with a SAG-AFTRA agreement generated in November 2022. “Micros” are not subject to the strike, and if this policy changes, we will make any necessary adjustments or agreements. We are an 100% independently financed, independently produced short film with no connection to the AMPTP. Supporting our film indicates your support for the growth of independent film production and studios.

FOR MORE INFORMATION 

For full listing of our cast and crew, see our website: eatsurfloveproductions.com

If you’d like merchandise, such as our Eat Surf Love fleece jacket, or mugs, send us an email.

To contact us directly – send an email to eatsurflovefilm@gmail.com

 

We are grateful for the generous support of our sponsors:

National Endowments for the Arts
Massachusetts Cultural Council
Lowel Cultural Council
Cabot Family Charitable Trust
Liberty Mutual Foundation
City of Boston Arts and Culture