UPDATE 25/10:
We've reached our initial target. It's now time to talk about stretch goals! Every further penny we receive from this Kickstarter campaign will go towards making the production value of this film as high as possible. But we set out on this project because we felt Herbert's story was such a great one that so few people in Nottingham knew about. Therefore we are proud to announce the following stretch goals:
If we reach £4000 we will...
Make a copy of the film available for free to every school in Nottingham. We want all children of Nottingham to know about this founding father of AC Milan who was born in their city.
If we reach £5000 we will...
Send a copy of the Lord of Milan book to every public library in Nottingham. That way anyone in Nottingham can read Herbert's story for free.
Alongside these stretch goals we have some very exclusive new rewards that we sourced on our filming visit to Milan.


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Herbert Kilpin is the founder of AC Milan football team. He was born in Nottingham as one of 15 children in 1870, the son of a butcher. He began a career in the Lace industry in Nottingham, before moving to Italy in his early twenties to continue his textiles career out there.
He became one of the first Englishman to play football abroad and played in the first two Italian Football Championships in the early 1890s. By 1898 he had settled in Milan and whilst there he founded a football team that would go on to become one of the best in the world.
Herbert is known across Italy as the father of Italian football, but in his hometown of Nottingham, UK very little is known of his work and life.
LeftLion are a media company from Nottingham and we want to change that. We have experience of making videos with high-profile footballers and for organisations such as Nottingham City of Football.

We are aiming to raise £3000. This will cover
- Creating a 30-minute documentary following Kilpin's journey from Nottingham to Milan, tracing his old haunts in both the UK and Italy and interviewing people from AC Milan, sports journalists, ex-players and his existing family members. If we were doing this project commercially, the fee for it would be much higher than we are asking here. The money we are seeking to raise will simply be used to help pay for some of the costs we incur and the rest of this project will be subsidised by LeftLion Ltd.
- We will also pay for a plaque to be placed on the wall of Herbert's birthplace in Nottingham, UK to permanently celebrate his life.
- We will hold a public screening of the film in a venue in Nottingham.
- Ideally, we'd like to release a version of the film with Italian subtitles too, although we may need to treat that as a stretch goal after we reach our target.

To give you all an example of our work, here is a video we shot recently for Nottingham City of Football to celebrate the memories of local people 50 years on from England winning the World Cup...
Risks and challenges
There are very few risks to this project.
We are an experienced film crew who have shot hundreds of videos together previously - many of which are about football. We have all our own equipment in-house to both film and edit the video.
We have received agreement from AC Milan FC to film with them in their stadium and at Casa Milan, the AC Milan museum. We will be flying out there for the anniversary of Herbert's death on Saturday 22 October, which is during the duration of this project. The flights and accommodation in Italy have been paid for from our own funds.
We are in talks with several sports journalists, ex-footballers and members of the Kilpin family and they are all keen to film with us on this project if we can cover costs for their travel and time.
As with all film projects, the more money we raise the higher we can raise the value of production. We're aiming to make a 30-minute piece, but if we exceed our goal the film may be longer and it will enable us to reach interviewees we otherwise might not.
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Funding period
- (34 days)