SHE SINGS TO THE STARS
Bristol, Vermont | Film Feature
Drama, Mystery
The endless desert. A Native American grandmother lives alone tending her corn. Her half-Mexican grandson and a white, aging magician are stranded. No water. A river of stars. Everything changes: anything is possible.
SHE SINGS TO THE STARS
Bristol, Vermont | Film Feature
Drama, Mystery
1 Campaigns | Vermont, United States
Green Light
This campaign raised $39,077 for distribution. Follow the filmmaker to receive future updates on this project.
326 supporters | followers
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The endless desert. A Native American grandmother lives alone tending her corn. Her half-Mexican grandson and a white, aging magician are stranded. No water. A river of stars. Everything changes: anything is possible.
About The Project
- The Story
- Wishlist
- Updates
- The Team
- Community
The Story
For indigenous peoples, everything is alive, everything is connected. A Hopi proverb says: "All dreams spin out from the same web."
I was visited by Mabel, the main character of She Sings to the Stars, in a dream. She was small and very old, sitting on the back of a wooden cart, spindly legs dangling. She said, “It is time to sing the song. Listen. It will take four years.” Having lived in the Southwest for years I had come to know several elders from Third Mesa at Hopi in Arizona, and when I asked one of them about the dreams, he replied, "This happens."
Dreams arrive, we don’t concoct them. And four long years later, the film had its first preview screening.
Mabel is not in a hurry. As a grandmother, she is the keeper of timelessness, as is reflected by the desert and the endless expanse of stars. She listens and sings with all that is around her. While little seems to happen in her world, it is a container of 'now', a constant now where anything (and everything) is possible.
In our 20s, my brother Jonnie and I wanted to create our own production company and began dreaming up stories. I had been trained as a director in the theatre and worked in documentary production, my brother had been schooled in business and marketing and was a serious cinephile. Life took us in different directions. We raised our families but made a promise to return to film.
In 2010, we agreed the moment was right. We created Circeo Films with the intention to produce a cycle of films about women. Innately feminine voices are too often missing in the story-telling world of film. And we seem to have forgotten the feminine nature of the Earth and our intimate relationship to it. It is a time when women all over the planet are stepping forward with their own voices -- voices which have been silent for a very long time.
We dove in at the deep end with a feature-length film, She Sings to the Stars, with Jonnie as producer and me as writer/director. Writing and directing your own work is like trying to wake up inside a dream. Since filmmaking is such a fluid, intuitive medium, it can be the place where the waking and the dreaming worlds merge into one.
The script was two years in the making. I constructed three life-sized, newspaper-stuffed, dressed figures of the characters and lived with them. Sometimes they offered clues, sometimes they didn't -- there were days and weeks of nothing but frustration, then 4AM wakings where I could actually see a light inside my brain and ideas would scramble to get out. The story grew through 17 drafts.
I thought Mabel was telling me to "listen" for the story. During the years it took to craft the story, I came to realize she was telling me simply to listen. Listen deeply. One of the questions that ripples through She Sings to the Stars is 'what does it mean to listen'? Can we stop long enough to actually listen to one other, and perhaps more importantly, to listen to something deep within ourselves? The desert offers a silence, a mystery, that compels us to listen.
As first-time feature filmmakers, we had to trust the process, take the endless stream of rejections from potential investors, potential actors, countless film festivals and dare to carry on. The process, itself, was how the vision came to life. On a tiny budget, we collaborated with precious backers and generous cast, crew, desert and stars. It has been exhilarating and exhausting, grueling and mystifying and ultimately indescribably rewarding. Along with the awards that the film has already received, the hearteningly warm response from audiences at film festivals has continued to buoy us onward.
Now in order for the film to be released in the US and internationally, it requires distribution. Across this varied world we share, in over 45 countries, people are following the film on social media, encouraging us with their enthusiastic support, eager for the film's release. Once She Sings to the Stars has been distributed, we can begin the next film in the cycle that will be shot in Ireland with a 28-year old woman as protagonist.
The journey of creating this film, from start to (almost) finish has been a magical one. Magic is everyday. We seem to have created a separation between what we call magic or the 'impossible' and what we call reality, which is without magic. We knew this unequivocally as children, when in our world everything was alive, interconnected and we existed in a continual state of reciprocity. Indigenous cultures still know this. (And physics can now prove it.) We've believed in the magic of anything being possible, and now this possibility extends to you.
Wishlist
Use the WishList to Pledge cash and Loan items - or - Make a pledge by selecting an Incentive directly.
Music Rights
Costs $13,000
In order to enter into a distribution contract, full licensing rights for all music in the film are required.
Publicity and Marketing
Costs $10,000
This covers the services of our PR and Marketing professional over 2-3 months as well as the cost of our media buy across print and digital.
Cinema Rental
Costs $5,000
The week-long rental of a cinema in Los Angeles.
Legal Services
Costs $4,000
We will require an attorney to help review and negotiate distribution contracts.
Deliverables for Distribution
Costs $5,000
Films have an extensive list of deliverables required for distribution: Mastering DCP, DVD, Blu-Ray, Pro-Res plus graphics & packaging.
Travel
Costs $4,000
We will be sending our team on the road to promote the release of She Sings to the Stars.
Errors and Omissions Insurance
Costs $3,000
Errors & Omissions insurance provides liability coverage for us as filmmakers and our distribution partners.
Cash Pledge
Costs $0
Direct link:
Share this update!
About This Team
Not only were we shooting the film in a desert landscape, we were actually in the middle of nowhere. Everything electric had to be run off generators, and the fine desert sand found its way into all the equipment. The November sun could be brilliant and burning by day, while at night temperatures plummeted to 15F (-10C), and throughout we had dust blows and wearing winds. We had to drive miles each night (or, if we had been shooting all night, at dawn) to return to our motel.
It can be challenging to make intelligent decisions when shooting outside all night in sub-freezing temperatures, particularly for the actors who were costumed for summer scenes. I watched all of us stutter with brain freeze and fumble at simple tasks. November 1, All Soul’s Night, was an important feast and night of ceremony for actress Fannie Loretto's Jemez Pueblo tribe. She had asked for the night off from shooting and remarked as she left, “You all should take the night off because the spirits of the ancestors will be out. We honor them and then go inside for the night. If they find you outside, they might have fun with you.”
We thought we had a film to make and a schedule to keep, so on we forged, shooting scenes which didn’t involve her: a generator broke down, the picture car broke down and the camera broke down. When Fannie heard our news the next day, she said, “I told you.”
It was tough, even grueling at times, and yet the desert was enchanting -- its mysterious beauty sometimes startling. The night skies were liquid with stars. And I watched as each of us, even those from New Mexico, underwent subtle changes. We were impelled to surrender to the desert, to unexpected possibility. We had to step back and allow something nearly out of our control come to life. Our cinematographer has repeatedly described the shoot in the desert as "an amazingly cathartic journey."
Actor Larry Cedar recently said, "Rarely have I worked on a project of such creative purity, where everyone involved, from cast to crew to cinematographer to director and producer, was completely and passionately committed to capturing the story in the best way possible."
This is a film about magic, wonder, and the nature of possibility. As a first-time writer/director of a feature film, I was both aware of my naiveté and wary of restrictions being imposed upon the story I had written. But out in the desert under a broad river of infinite stars, everyone pulled together to make true the film's refrain: "Do you believe anything is possible?"
I am so deeply grateful to each one of them for leaping, passionately, into the unknown with us to dare to create the reality of this magic.
Current Team
Incentives
- The Story
- Wishlist
- Updates
- The Team
- Community
The Story
For indigenous peoples, everything is alive, everything is connected. A Hopi proverb says: "All dreams spin out from the same web."
I was visited by Mabel, the main character of She Sings to the Stars, in a dream. She was small and very old, sitting on the back of a wooden cart, spindly legs dangling. She said, “It is time to sing the song. Listen. It will take four years.” Having lived in the Southwest for years I had come to know several elders from Third Mesa at Hopi in Arizona, and when I asked one of them about the dreams, he replied, "This happens."
Dreams arrive, we don’t concoct them. And four long years later, the film had its first preview screening.
Mabel is not in a hurry. As a grandmother, she is the keeper of timelessness, as is reflected by the desert and the endless expanse of stars. She listens and sings with all that is around her. While little seems to happen in her world, it is a container of 'now', a constant now where anything (and everything) is possible.
In our 20s, my brother Jonnie and I wanted to create our own production company and began dreaming up stories. I had been trained as a director in the theatre and worked in documentary production, my brother had been schooled in business and marketing and was a serious cinephile. Life took us in different directions. We raised our families but made a promise to return to film.
In 2010, we agreed the moment was right. We created Circeo Films with the intention to produce a cycle of films about women. Innately feminine voices are too often missing in the story-telling world of film. And we seem to have forgotten the feminine nature of the Earth and our intimate relationship to it. It is a time when women all over the planet are stepping forward with their own voices -- voices which have been silent for a very long time.
We dove in at the deep end with a feature-length film, She Sings to the Stars, with Jonnie as producer and me as writer/director. Writing and directing your own work is like trying to wake up inside a dream. Since filmmaking is such a fluid, intuitive medium, it can be the place where the waking and the dreaming worlds merge into one.
The script was two years in the making. I constructed three life-sized, newspaper-stuffed, dressed figures of the characters and lived with them. Sometimes they offered clues, sometimes they didn't -- there were days and weeks of nothing but frustration, then 4AM wakings where I could actually see a light inside my brain and ideas would scramble to get out. The story grew through 17 drafts.
I thought Mabel was telling me to "listen" for the story. During the years it took to craft the story, I came to realize she was telling me simply to listen. Listen deeply. One of the questions that ripples through She Sings to the Stars is 'what does it mean to listen'? Can we stop long enough to actually listen to one other, and perhaps more importantly, to listen to something deep within ourselves? The desert offers a silence, a mystery, that compels us to listen.
As first-time feature filmmakers, we had to trust the process, take the endless stream of rejections from potential investors, potential actors, countless film festivals and dare to carry on. The process, itself, was how the vision came to life. On a tiny budget, we collaborated with precious backers and generous cast, crew, desert and stars. It has been exhilarating and exhausting, grueling and mystifying and ultimately indescribably rewarding. Along with the awards that the film has already received, the hearteningly warm response from audiences at film festivals has continued to buoy us onward.
Now in order for the film to be released in the US and internationally, it requires distribution. Across this varied world we share, in over 45 countries, people are following the film on social media, encouraging us with their enthusiastic support, eager for the film's release. Once She Sings to the Stars has been distributed, we can begin the next film in the cycle that will be shot in Ireland with a 28-year old woman as protagonist.
The journey of creating this film, from start to (almost) finish has been a magical one. Magic is everyday. We seem to have created a separation between what we call magic or the 'impossible' and what we call reality, which is without magic. We knew this unequivocally as children, when in our world everything was alive, interconnected and we existed in a continual state of reciprocity. Indigenous cultures still know this. (And physics can now prove it.) We've believed in the magic of anything being possible, and now this possibility extends to you.
Wishlist
Use the WishList to Pledge cash and Loan items - or - Make a pledge by selecting an Incentive directly.
Music Rights
Costs $13,000
In order to enter into a distribution contract, full licensing rights for all music in the film are required.
Publicity and Marketing
Costs $10,000
This covers the services of our PR and Marketing professional over 2-3 months as well as the cost of our media buy across print and digital.
Cinema Rental
Costs $5,000
The week-long rental of a cinema in Los Angeles.
Legal Services
Costs $4,000
We will require an attorney to help review and negotiate distribution contracts.
Deliverables for Distribution
Costs $5,000
Films have an extensive list of deliverables required for distribution: Mastering DCP, DVD, Blu-Ray, Pro-Res plus graphics & packaging.
Travel
Costs $4,000
We will be sending our team on the road to promote the release of She Sings to the Stars.
Errors and Omissions Insurance
Costs $3,000
Errors & Omissions insurance provides liability coverage for us as filmmakers and our distribution partners.
Cash Pledge
Costs $0
Direct link:
Share this update!
About This Team
Not only were we shooting the film in a desert landscape, we were actually in the middle of nowhere. Everything electric had to be run off generators, and the fine desert sand found its way into all the equipment. The November sun could be brilliant and burning by day, while at night temperatures plummeted to 15F (-10C), and throughout we had dust blows and wearing winds. We had to drive miles each night (or, if we had been shooting all night, at dawn) to return to our motel.
It can be challenging to make intelligent decisions when shooting outside all night in sub-freezing temperatures, particularly for the actors who were costumed for summer scenes. I watched all of us stutter with brain freeze and fumble at simple tasks. November 1, All Soul’s Night, was an important feast and night of ceremony for actress Fannie Loretto's Jemez Pueblo tribe. She had asked for the night off from shooting and remarked as she left, “You all should take the night off because the spirits of the ancestors will be out. We honor them and then go inside for the night. If they find you outside, they might have fun with you.”
We thought we had a film to make and a schedule to keep, so on we forged, shooting scenes which didn’t involve her: a generator broke down, the picture car broke down and the camera broke down. When Fannie heard our news the next day, she said, “I told you.”
It was tough, even grueling at times, and yet the desert was enchanting -- its mysterious beauty sometimes startling. The night skies were liquid with stars. And I watched as each of us, even those from New Mexico, underwent subtle changes. We were impelled to surrender to the desert, to unexpected possibility. We had to step back and allow something nearly out of our control come to life. Our cinematographer has repeatedly described the shoot in the desert as "an amazingly cathartic journey."
Actor Larry Cedar recently said, "Rarely have I worked on a project of such creative purity, where everyone involved, from cast to crew to cinematographer to director and producer, was completely and passionately committed to capturing the story in the best way possible."
This is a film about magic, wonder, and the nature of possibility. As a first-time writer/director of a feature film, I was both aware of my naiveté and wary of restrictions being imposed upon the story I had written. But out in the desert under a broad river of infinite stars, everyone pulled together to make true the film's refrain: "Do you believe anything is possible?"
I am so deeply grateful to each one of them for leaping, passionately, into the unknown with us to dare to create the reality of this magic.