Here’s the deal. My Birthday is May 16th. You’re invited.
I’m having an art show where I am making 100 paintings. I am selling them to help me get to Poland to film, research, and make pitch materials to find the right investors, partners and producers.
It is 2 partS
TL;DR : Buy a small painting to help turn a $75 painting found in Rockford into a serious documentary about memory, responsibility, and the strange places history resurfaces. Your purchase helps fund the development work needed to bring larger producers, funders, and partners to the table.
A painting bought for $75 out of the back of a pickup truck in Rockford MADE A MYTH BECOME REAL.
This painting may be the first known physical evidence of a Holocaust-era painting workshop of Jews forced by a Nazi officer into creating copies of European masterworks making him very rich.
That sounds impossible.
The people who made the discovery were not traditional historians.
Not an institution.
They were Tim Prince and Sarah Thistle, two Rockford people who make bone sculptures from roadkill and sell oddities most people turn their nose up at.
They could have sold the painting for a small fortune.
Yet, they returned it to Poland.
That choice is character defining.
This film asks what that choice says about Rockford, memory, responsibility, and the strange places history chooses to surface.
Help Rockford claim its place in a story with international historical weight.
For my birthday, May 16th, I’m making 100 original 5" x 7" paintings for sale.
A painting for a painting
WHAT YOU GET
An original 5" x 7" painting.
A film credit.
Your name listed on the wall next to the painting you purchased.
A direct role in helping develop The Copyists documentary.
Click to take you to purchase page!
PURCHASE NOW — $150
Reserve a piece before the public showing.
Puts your name next to the purchased work for others to see.
Support the project.
Purchase AT THE EVENT — $100
FIRST COME — $100
Choose at the May 16 event.
My friends are helping me out, too!
5” x 7” painting for $100 will be available from
ONELIGHTSHOW
A OneLightShow is a showcase of wonderful individuals and the beauty they bring to the world.
When the performer gets up, the lights go off, the bar shuts down, and there is only one light on. It is on the performer.
That person has 7 minutes of undivided audience attention.
Respect for the audience from the performer, respect for the performer from the audience.
Hosted by Vic Rivera
SALES GO TO FILM PRE-PRODUCTION AND development
The goal is not to keep asking this community to carry the whole film.
This fundraiser helps me film the conservation of the painting in Poland, continue the research, build the treatment, create the pitch materials, and bring the right larger partners as Executive Producers to the table.
In other words, this is the step that helps the project grow beyond a local fundraiser and into a serious documentary production.
Photo by Kevin Haas of the Rock River Current.
Our City, Our Story
The painting surfaced here.
The choice to return it happened here.
The first people to protect it were from here.
For years, I have been telling stories through Our City, Our Story built on the belief that Rockford carries stories bigger than people expect.
This is one of them.
It is in Rockford where history landed in the wrong hands,
which turned out to be the right hands.
May 16th
8:00 pm DOORS OPEN
9:00 PM One Light Show begins
The 304 Main Building
304 N Main Street
Rockford, IL 61101
More details being announced.
more info on