Brownstones in the Aspen Daily News

Damien Williamson over at Aspen Daily News gave Brownstones a very nice shout-out is his festival preview story:

But it is perhaps in the quieter films, like “Brownstones to Red Dirt,” that the true character of Filmfest emerges. In the movie, sixth-graders from an elementary school in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y., which as recently as 2005 was declared an “impact zone” due to the excessive violence in the community, were paired with students in war-town Sierra Leone for a pen-pal program.

Co-director Dave LaMattina had been working in an animation studio, and was looking for “a project with a little more meaning.”

“I had done a film in South Africa on kids with HIV and AIDS,” LaMattina says. “So I was looking for something along those lines. And what I really wanted to do was find a story where there was hope in a community where you wouldn’t expect it.”

The results were astounding. The kids in Bed-Stuy were able to gain perspective on their own lives through interactions with the orphaned children that struggled for food, water and electricity — though who still had similar goals and aspirations — in Sierra Leone. And the African children gained something that had been denied them for most of their lives: someone who cared.

Countdown to Aspen FilmFest!

In just five short days, Brownstones to Red Dirt will be one of just twenty films to screen at the 32nd annual Aspen FilmFest. All of the screening details are here. We are so excited to be a part of this truly independent festival that aims to focus on the "human spirit." As the festival's Artistic Director Laura Thielen recently told the Aspen Daily News, "We tend to look at ordinary people doing extraordinary things.”

That's exactly how we see the kids that star in Brownstones - Balla, Emmanuel, Augusta, Abdul, Fred, Destiny, Malik and Isaiah. They are ordinary kids doing extraordinary things, as they reach out and offer their hearts to strangers on the other side of the world.