Final Edit Underway: News from WITH WINGS AND ROOTS (Newsletter)

Dear friends,

Greetings from deep inside editing suite!  I have been in Berlin since February's working with our super-talented editor Aletta von Vietinghoff and a great team of collaborators, as we transform seven years of footage into a 90-min documentary. It has been a massive job but extremely rewarding, and we are so close!

Each day I feel lucky to spend hours of time with the stories of Tania, Sonny, Miman, Akim and Derya - artists and activists from immigrant families - as they push the boundaries of what it means to belong. 

As the film takes shape, I am more convinced than ever that their stories have the power to motivate action for immigrant justice, create inroads to discuss and challenge racism, and inspire new approaches to our visions of belonging. 

At the same time, we have continued our community engagement work and building the interactive website. Read more about that progress below.

Last year's successful Kickstarter campaign allowed us to get to the roughcut phase. Thank you again to all of you who supported! As we approach the final phase of the edit we are thrilled to report that the Sikh Spirit Foundation has offered us a generous matching grant to cover the finishing costs of completing the film. This includes services like color correction, audio mixing and other technical inputs, all necessary for preparing a film for festival submission and theatrical release. The foundation will double donations up to $5000. 

We are running a campaign from now until Nov. 15th in order to finish the film by the end of the year. Please consider making a Tax-deductible donation today, and help us get these stories out into the world! Any contribution, large or small will make a difference. 

DONATE TODAY

INTERACTIVE

Our interactive website is built...but it's not quite public yet! We are putting on the final touches - subtitling hundreds of videos, translating our U.S. and German historical timelines of Migration, Citizenship and Belonging, and ironing out technical bugs to prepare for an official launch. The site will go public on January 29th at a live event at Werkstatt der Kulturen Berlin. We will keep you posted for New York and Seattle events to follow shortly thereafter!

EDUCATION

We are getting the project in front of many new faces! October and November are busy months with over 9 workshops and presentations in the U.S., Austria, and Germany - including the German National Education Union’s Committee for Migration, Diversity, and Anti-discrimination (GWE-LAMA),  the annual Humanity In Action Conference in NYC, and a week-long workshop with high school students in Berlin where they will create their own videos using our timeline.

We are excited to expand on this momentum upon the release of the film and website!

TEAM

Our community engagement and education work is expanding. Ongoing screenings and workshops have been The team continues to grow. We are 20 strong, spread across New York, Berlin, Esslingen and Seattle. If you would like to get involved, particularly in social media, design or community engagement, please get in touch at info@withwingsandroots.com

Also, you may have seen on our social media feeds in June that we initiated a petition to stop the deportation of our colleague Simran from Germany. The petition collected over 70,000 signatures and Simran's story attracted media coverage from nearly every major German outlet. Following the success of the campaign, Simran has shared her reflections the experience and some of structural issues at play in an interview on our blog. Please read and share.

THANK YOU!!

We could never have gotten this far without you. Despite the challenge of making art independently, I am so proud that it has been thousands of supporters across the world who have made this vision a reality. I am so excited to be able share the work with the world soon!

-- Christina & the entire WINGS crew