February 25th, 2010

I love you New Yorkers.  Thank you for coming to support The Visitors despite the weather.

Nicki and Angie -the  characters from the film- were present during question and answer session. Nicki is still traveling to visit her husband. Thankfully he’s located in a correctional facility closer to NY now. We hope he’ll be home soon.

Angie’s husband is home. They’ve been happily together on the outside for 2 years now. He was also present during the screening.

nicki and melis

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/film_screenings/8802

Our special thanks goes out to Exodus teacher Gordon Brown, counselor Ms. Fernandez and counselor Mr. Fields for facilitating these screenings. The film was very well received by the inmates and we’ve had very emotional question and answer sessions.

Along with the inmates who have seen the film, we are now   thinking  the ways  how we can all work together so that The Visitors can be  seen by all the inmates in NY State Prison system as well as the staff. More comments  by the inmates will be posted soon but one of my favorite is this: ” Your film did honor the struggle without over sentimentalizing it.”

(These screenings were made possible through a NYSCA grant)

Visitors will be airing on the documentary channel, here are the upcoming dates:

Feb. 14th (Sun) at 8pm
Feb. 14th (Sun) at 11pm
Mar. 04th (Thr) at 8:30pm
Mar. 04th (Thr) at 11:30pm
Mar. 30th (Tue) at 6:30pm
Apr. 05th (Mon) at 9:15pm

Read an interview with Visitors Director Melis Birder>>

Youtube video DOC. Channel Teaser

The Visitors shares the Best Documentary Award at Golden Orange Film Festival in Turkey.
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/t.php?t=golden%20orange%202009

Thank you all for coming to see The Visitors at UrbanWorld.

Even though we’ve had all the technical nightmares occured during the screening, your support was so touching.

http://blogs.bet.com/entertainment/whattheflick/the-13th-urbanworld-film-festival-announces-2009-winners/

On June 17th, we organized a screening at the Arthur Kill Correctional Facility to a group of inmates who were members of the “Lifers and Long Timers Group”. The screening turned out be a moving experience both for the inmates and myself. We received many insightful feedbacks and comments.

During the Q & A session, the inmates emphasized that “the film raised an awareness about the trials and the tribulations that their loved ones go through year after year thus giving them strength and hope to continue to do what’s right.”

The counselors who arranged the screening were also very supportive of the film. Few days following the screening, one of them told me that “the film created such a positive buzz at the facility that the men couldn’t stop talking about it. ”

Our next goal is to reach out to as many correctional facilities as possible.

We  screened the film to a full house of 500 hundred people with a great response from the audience.

denise and i during q and a

our executive sam pollard and composers jay tran and rob friedman

denise's family and our editor Kim

Yes. We have finally finished the film. And we’re having our world premiere on Friday April 3rd at Full Frame Film Festival Durham  North Carolina.

We’re especially proud to be part of the festival as this year’s program is also honoring our late executive producer St. Clair Bourne with the 2009 Career Award. 

Our main character Denise, her kids and her grandkids will also be there.
This will be fun!

Melis Birder’s documentary in post-production “Visitors” has been selected for the IFP Rough Cut Lab that took place between 6-9 May, 2008 in New York. The workshop brought together the documentaries in progress as rough-cuts with the mentors of the industry.

Upon the sudden death of executive producer St. Clair Bourne in December 2007. Sam Pollard has become the new executive producer of the “Visitors”.

• link to Sam Pollard on IMDB

We are deeply saddened by news of, VISITORS executive producer, St. Clair Bourne’s sudden death.

From the NY TIMES:
St.Clair Bourne, a documentary filmmaker who recorded American black culture, produced portraits of eminent African-Americans and, in one stark film, drew a parallel between the civil rights movement and the “troubles” in Northern Ireland, died on Saturday in Manhattan. He was 64 and lived in Brooklyn.

The cause was a pulmonary embolism, said Judith Bourne, his sister and only immediate family member.

In a 36-year career in which he made more than 40 films, either producing or directing or doing both, Mr. Bourne’s works were seen on public television, commercial networks and at film festivals around the country. Among his subjects were the singer, actor and activist Paul Robeson; the poet, novelist and playwright Langston Hughes; the photojournalist and filmmaker Gordon Parks; and the poet and activist Amiri Baraka.

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