To accomplish my Senior Thesis Film
Donation protected
"The mother is everything −− she is our consolation in sorrow, our hope in misery, and our strength in weakness. She is the source of love, mercy, sympathy, and forgiveness." From The Broken Wings by Khalil Gibran
Hi I am Matilda
I am, like my mother, a “Child of the Universe.” Art is in my blood, and it is my desire to tell the stories of my community through the arts.
On my journey through the arts, I completed my first Film, dedicated to Harriet Tubman, when I participated in the Telluride Association Sophomore Seminar in high school. It was a culmination of all that we learned during my summer experience. The exposure to diverse voices and the need to bring individual truths to light made that experience powerful.
As a creative force, I continued collaborations and created installations, alongside my mother, for festivals like Rooms to Let and Station Hope in Cleveland, Ohio. Each was in response to a call to action for the community. Rooms to let brought attention to the housing crisis, and Station Hope celebrated Cleveland’s anti-slavery past.
Why Donate?
The movie I am creating this year is my senior thesis and a culmination of all that I learned as a film student at Syracuse University. It is an homage to my mother. I grew up in a single-parent household. I wanted to touch on the importance of single mothers maintaining the basics and doing everything with little help. This short will center on a moment where a mother, Charlisa, struggles with finding someone to watch her baby as she tries to attend a job interview to help support her and her child.
There are many costs that go into the making of a film. I will use professionals in my production and I will be shooting analog film, with a 16mm camera. The quality of 16 mm will help bring out the essence visually of the story. This fundraiser will help pay for the film footage and the digitizing process. It will also pay for the talent in front of the camera and behind the scenes, along with the post-production process. The goal is 6,000. I believe it is important to pay for the talents that will help bring this film to life.
I hope you will help support this amazing story.
Here are some of the people that will be working on the film
Actress playing Charlisa
Carley Robinson
is a theatre practitioner, arts educator, and community worker local to Upstate New York. Through theatre, she invites people to access their inner expertise, and challenges them to see their stories as gifts to our community. Her work is to serve her community as much as it’s served her. Guided by principles of love and care for all community members, Carley strives to hold space for communities and individuals to be in conversation and pursue their best path forward.
Director of Photography
Kevin Jerome Everson
Artist/Filmmaker Kevin Jerome Everson has made over two-hundred films including Tonsler Park, The Island of Saint Matthews, Erie, Ears, Nose and Throat, Sound That, Sugarcoated Arsenic, with Claudrena Harold, and Park Lanes. He also has three DVD box sets of his films; How You Live Your Story: Selected Works by Kevin Jerome Everson, Broad Daylight and Other Times and I Really Hear Something: Quality Control and Other Films.
Everson’s films and artwork have been widely shown at venues including Sundance Film Festival, Berlin Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Oberhausen Film Festival, Venice International Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, BlackStar Film Festival, The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Museum of African-American History, The Tate Modern in London, Andrew Kreps Gallery in New York and Centre Pompidou in Paris. The films have streamed on multiple platform sites including Criterion Channel and MUBI. The work has also been recognized through awards and fellowships such as Guggenheim Fellowship, an Alpert Award, a Heinz Award, a Creative Capital Fellowship, an American Academy in Rome Prize, and an American Academy in Berlin Prize.
Everson is represented by Picture Palace Pictures New York and Andrew Kreps Gallery New York.
Executive Producer
Gina Washington
Gina Washington was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, and graduated with an MFA in Photography from Ohio University and a BA in Films from the University of Rochester. She considers herself “a Child of the Universe” and has traveled to many places collecting images and connecting artists. Gina has exhibited her work nationally and internationally at the Fotonostrum Gallery in Barcelona, Spain. Most recently, she was awarded The Satellite Fund grant, administered by SPACES and supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, a residency with Akron Soul Train Art Museum, and the Equity in the Arts grant through the Cleveland Foundation, as she creates art “by any means necessary”. She is also the founder of Mateza Gallery LLC on Etsy and, as a master collaborator, co-founded The Visit Arts Collective. Ultimately her goal is to bring clarity and solutions to the chaos in the world through art and to make art accessible to all people, especially the disenfranchised and underrepresented in the global community.
Along with Jeff Ivey Gaffer
Organizer
Matilda Washington
Organizer
Syracuse, NY