About this project

For a better quality version of the trailer, go to www.bornandbredmovie.com

PROJECT IS LIVE!!! --- MONDAY - OCTOBER 19th

WHAT IS THIS????

This is called CROWD-FUNDING. Movie-goers decide the films they want to see instead of Hollywood Executives!! Be part of the revolution in how films are made!!

Note: All pledges are handled by Amazon.com and you are NOT charged until the full goal has been reached and the project ends. For more info on how this works, click on the "Learn More" link at the top of the page.

Visit the official film blog to get updates on the documentary:

http://theamateurboxer.com/

About the Film: Born and Bred is a feature-length documentary film chronicling the lives of a new generation of young boxers fighting for their place in the American boxing capital of Los Angeles where Latino immigration is surging to a historical breaking point. At the heart of the film is the story of 15-year-old twin brothers in their last 2 years in the tough ranks of amateur boxing where boys are made into men and Olympic dreams are won and lost.

What we need: Film is finished (!!) but we are being prevented from distributing it until we pay for the rights to particular archival/third party footage and music (HBO, ESPN and others) as well as necessary legal fees (plus costs for this). This amount totals $50,000 and we cannot release the film until the proper corporations are paid.

Why do we need it: With the crash of the economy came the crash of investors for independent film and there is no way to cover our added expenses. Rather then patiently waiting for the American money machine to come back to life, we are taking things into our own hands and taking the film straight to the people.

About the Film In-Depth:

3 years in the making, 120 hours of footage from all over the country and the perfect storm of a story...Born and Bred is both a documentation of the boxing gym culture on the East side of Los Angeles and a dramatic cinema-verite styled story of 15-year-old twin brothers as they move from fighting kids to fighting men. The film follows a number of kids for several years as they struggle inside and outside the ring to survive and win at all costs.

The focus of the story, apart from the boxing, is the emotional bond between trainer and boxer that has formed the lives of nearly every great boxer in recent history. It documents a boxer being made into a boxer and the extreme emotional and mental demands of kids who are taught to step into the ring in front of a crowd and risk everything to achieve victory.

Official Website: www.bornandbredmovie.com

Frequently Asked Questions:

When is the film going to premiere and when am I going to get my DVD or digital download?

Late 2009/Early 2010. As soon as the fundraising is complete, we will finish up the final touches of the film, book the theaters and send the Limited Release DVD to those who have pledged accordingly. The film will premiere in Los Angeles, New York and in select cities around the country.

Is this film good?

We've shown it to about 20 or 30 people of all backgrounds and tastes and have yet to receive one negative review. If you liked Hoop Dreams or When We Were Kings, you'll like this.

Why are you doing this? Isn't there a giant banking apparatus in Hollywood that invests in good movies and just gives viewers what they want to see?

No, of course not. The film industry is run by 8 major studios owned by multinational corporations who all cater to cheap entertainment and maximum profit to shareholders at all costs. "Independent" film feeds off the interest of wealthy private investors and Wall St. success, both of which have pulled back from backing any films that take any significant risks at all. The only viable answer to all this is to just make the film and to eliminate risk through a platform like this.

What if I pledge and you don't reach your funding goal to distribute the film?

1. Then you pay nothing. There is no risk.
2. We will not be able to distribute the film.

What exactly is the Limited Edition DVD? Why can't I just wait for the commercial DVD to come out?

The Limited Edition DVD comes in a handcrafted brushed tin case with a plush coated polystyrene tray. This version of the DVD will come with extra scenes, footage and bonus additions that will not be made available on the commercial DVD.

I am reading this right now but there is something that is keeping me from pledging...what is it?

I have no idea. Media overload? Depression? Seen too many bad movies? Is that it? Living in a world of all marketing hype and no substance? You've come to the right place. This is the kind of film you watch when you want to be reminded what counts and what doesn't, when you want to see the exceptional stories of other people to be inspired yourself and when you just want to make a statement about what is possible in the face of all the negativity and cynicism in life. And lastly, you just want to watch a great movie that I guarantee will be one of the best documentaries you watch this year (or any year).

Has something like this been done before?

Yes and no. The technical term for it is "crowd-funding" and most recently was used to raise over $1 million for the film The Age of Stupid. Info about it can be found here from Peter Broderick, one of the top film distribution consultants in the country:

http://www.peterbroderick.com/distributionbulletins/files/2ed9cffaaca7165eb92b394278747869-10.html

But what is exciting about true independent film is that every film is unique and must chart its own course to find the audience who wants to see something different. That has brought us here.

Why did you make this film?

A question that I get asked more than any other question is how I ended up spending three years working on a documentary on amateur boxing. The answer is easy.

There are only two things in a documentary film. What you are filming and how you film it. I was literally walking down the street one afternoon looking, whether I knew it or not, for a particular kind of inspiration…a subject matter or a story or a person that had never really been shown on film…someone or something that was not so much larger than life as much as a gateway into the deeper, complex, messy humanness of being human where I could have free reign to do my thing. It didn’t happen when I walked by a random boxing gym and spoke to a trainer outside sweeping the sidewalk. And it didn’t happen when he invited me to see a local boxing match. It happened the first time I saw children fighting in a ring and the madness of the crowd and a mother in tears embracing her kid for beating the other boy.

In the sport of boxing, I was not interested in making a film about Mike Tyson or Muhammad Ali or Oscar De La Hoya. If someone offered me cold hard cash to make my name on a film about one of them I would have turned them down and shrugged my shoulders to anyone who asked if I was insane. Any film takes an incredible amount of time and energy to complete and rarely will any future film projects get off the ground without a similar project from the past on your record. It makes little sense to do anything but grind out the kind of thing you want to do as, like everything, you become what you do.

Not only am I not interested in chasing after famous or infamous individuals and being some parasite feeding off someone else’s fame, I have no interest in exploring minor topics like this. What I was seeking out when and before I dove head first into the center of the ring was a large canvas with lots of blood left by people who were in the middle of living life. I was not interested in the world of HBO PPV fights to explore as it is the end of the road instead of the beginning. Men fighting other men for money and fame, invigorating as it is at the moment of watching it, is a minor topic compared to the magnum opus of amateur boxing.

Amateur boxing is a kind of Genesis of sports and the most unfiltered view of the human struggle apart from a real wartime situation or the daily ritual of living in poverty or maybe some combination of the two. The phenomena of the fight is the physical violence and the story behind and beneath the fight is the mental violence that is condensed from the long diluted arc of waking life. The two violences combined is like watching some original struggle of a person fighting to become himself at the risk of getting the belief in himself destroyed. There is almost a purity to the way it holds the mirror up to nature.

I have yet to meet a fighter who is not deeply religious in some way. And there is something about the rituals of the boxing gym that is straight out of a monastery with all its ascetic practices and its devotion to pure discipline and overcoming all physical temptations. The boxer is a devout practitioner of life stripped of all delusions and comforts and made-up distractions that occupy most people in the course of a day.

What drew me to the sport of amateur boxing as a great subject for a documentary film was the naked fact of what happens inside the ring. The fight is the fight like all fights are fights. But in the course of the fight is the story of the larger fight of the fighters. Everyone has to fight at some point in his or her life whether one is from the streets of East LA or Bed Stuy or from the suburbs or the hills. And the fight is always a hell of a mess of someone trying to be somebody in a place where just about everybody seems like some kind of nobody. And this place for amateur boxing, and boxing as a whole, is a sport driven by men who are looking for a second chance and kids who are trying to be men and at the same time trying to figure out what it means to be a man.

But the manliness of sport is hardly discernable from the humanness of sports. What Cus D’amato called the “psychology of masculinity” really cannot be separated from the psychology of humanity. What happens in the course of a boxing fight is hardly discernable from what happens in the course of a life. It is the psychology of family. Family meaning the raw head trauma that we all suffer as kids and spend a life living out. Family meaning understanding that you can only play with the cards that you have been dealt. Family meaning the circumference of trust that you learn to measure after being burnt by everyone and anyone. Family meaning the few people who you can depend on with your most private of thoughts. Family meaning your mother and father and what they teach and expect of you. Family meaning belief that what someone else is telling you is true and not just told to use you. Family meaning what happens in the center and the corner of a boxing ring, between two people stripped of all material objects except their own desire to survive and triumph.

This is the magnum opus of amateur boxing and is what makes it a bigger subject for a film than the biggest televised fight in the past, in the present or in the future. Life happens not in the spectacle but in the immediate details in front of you. Not in the fame but in the hidden. Not in what you can see but in the subconscious made conscious by a fight. Not in what you say but what you do.

And after three years I am not quite sure what the film is anymore than I am sure what boxing is. What I know is that each round is 3 minutes in the same way that the film is 120 minutes in the same way a life span is some determined number of years. Each one is some attempt at controlling the forces in front of you in a mortal length of time and doing everything you can to extract a meaningful victory from what you know in front of a crowd of spectators.

I still have more questions. Who can answer them?

Please message me here. I am available to speak with anyone personally by phone as well.
Thanks for your support!