Kickstarter

Hi Team Pray for Japan:

Things have truly been crazy the past couple of weeks -- prepping everything for PRAY FOR JAPAN 's theatrical release has been a truly intense experience.  Usually filmmakers enter into an agreement with a distributor and the distributor handles all the prep for the release.  Well, typical me, I had to do it the hard way and go direct with the theaters :-)  The reason why I chose that method is multi-fold:

(1) Documentary films are very challenging to find a motivated distributor.

(2) Our clock was ticking since I believed (and still do) that the 1-year anniversary of March 2012 was the key window for us to release.

(3) My goal was to do a 100% charity release - where I could donate ALL the profits to Tohoku.  This would have been harder to do with a distributor, but going direct allows us to make that decision.  So, that's what we're doing (and the charity we're working with is JEN www.jen-npo.org who I volunteered with in Tohoku - their work is truly awe-inspiring and they don't waste their money on overhead).

(4) I found a partner who believed in our message:  AMC Theatres (and Hollywood Theaters in Maui, Hawaii who AMC introduced to me).

So, in North America we will be in 16 cities (the list of cities is available on our website and I'll attach a flyer here) all for a simultaneous special show:

MARCH 14, 7:00 PM

If any of you are available to come out, it would be great.  I will be at the Orange County show (AMC Orange at the Block) in the beginning to introduce it, then fight traffic to join the LA show (AMC Del Amo in Torrance) to do a brief Q&A after the show.  Then a number of the team will take over some local Japanese restaurant to be determined and eat/drink and breathe a sigh of relief.  If you are local in LA, please join us (since we have no budget we're going Dutch of course, but I'll personally buy everyone a drink :-) ).

In Japan, we have our WORLD PREMIERE coming up in just a couple of weeks.  This will be on:

MARCH 6, 7:00 PM

at Cinem@rt Shinjuku, info also on our website and Facebook.  I will be at that show as well.

And on March 7 we will be doing a special free screening for all the victims and volunteers in the film, as well as for locals.

Note that for the North America shows you can purchase the tickets at Fandango.com (for the Montreal and Toronto shows, tickets are at MovieTickets.com) and for the Tokyo premiere they are at Cinema Pia.

And, finally, our website is live!!!  It was tons of work, so please check it out.  It's not perfect but it's done (well, the Japanese version is still in progress).

www.prayforjapan-film.org

Thanks, as always, for your support!!

心を一つに！(one heart!)

--Stu