FoolishPeople is pleased to announce the launch of the IndieGoGo funding campaign for our forthcoming living feature film Strange Factories.
IndieGogo is the world’s leading international funding platform, launched at Sundance Festival in 2008 and founded on the principles of opportunity, transparency and action. It has enabled over 1000 projects in more than 80 countries to find funding for a wide array of ideas. The Age of Stupid is a recent high-profile example of a successfully crowd-funded film.
We believe that funding Strange Factories in this way will allow for truly independent filmmaking, enabling us to create a cinematic experience which is free from the commercial constraints and commodity-driven values of the big studios.
Strange Factories aims to offer a new mode of cinematic experience which will fuse film and theatre, with the film’s narrative also existing as a live event which will explore the earliest traditions of cinema and film, via the touring traditions of phantasmagoria and theatric arcana. As Writer/Co-director John Harrigan notes in The Phantasmagoria of Strange Factories:
“I always knew it would take time to adapt the immersive nature of FoolishPeople’s live art to a motion picture. It was crucial to maintain the direct connection we share with our audience via immersion in the ritual space, this is the most important aspect of our work.”
Strange Factories promises to be an immersive experience like no other. We aim to reclaim the transcendental, transformative power of cinema by creating cinema which lives and breathes. Rather than inviting our audience to watch a recording of a recording, ticket holders will be able to meet the characters of Strange Factories in a screening which dissolves all traditional Actor/Watcher boundaries, delving into the very womb of cinematic creation, challenging contemporary assumptions that film has become solely the domain of mega-bucks conjurers and techno-savvy tricksters. We aim to prove that the elusive magic of cinema can still be unearthed, through an almost alchemical understanding of its processes. Indeed, this shall be a film by film-lovers, for film-lovers. As Susan Sontag notes in The Decay of Cinema, the time has never been more ripe:
“Cinephilia tells us that the Hollywood remake of Godard's "Breathless" cannot be as good as the original. Cinephilia has no role in the era of hyperindustrial films. For cinephilia cannot help, by the very range and eclecticism of its passions, from sponsoring the idea of the film as, first of all, a poetic object; and cannot help from inciting those outside the movie industry, like painters and writers, to want to make films, too. It is precisely this notion that has been defeated.
If cinephilia is dead, then movies are dead too . . . no matter how many movies, even very good ones, go on being made. If cinema can be resurrected, it will only be through the birth of a new kind of cine-love”
Active participation and collaboration from our fan base and audience lie at the heart of every project that FoolishPeople undertake. We believe that funding Strange Factories via IndieGogo will take this form of collaboration to new levels, enabling you, our audience, to enter into the narrative of the film at the earliest possible stage - before the film has even been made.
Because stories are given life by those who engage with them.
Your pledges and donations (from as little as $1) will be used for the equipment, location costs, production design, and costume needed to make the film. We’re aiming to raise $12,000 via IndieGoGo to support the production costs needed to bring this unique story to life. Your pledges and donations are vital to enable us to create new forms of storytelling for audiences who hunger for vital new truthful experiences that go beyond simple entertainment.
This narrative needs You.
We’re offering magical and exclusive experiences as ‘perks’ for our funding drive on IndieGoGo revolving around the film's release that will give you the opportunity to explore the mystery of the narrative and learn how you may even already be part of this story. To show our gratitude for your support and confidence in our idea and work, anyone who pledges via IndieGoGo will be the very first afforded the opportunity to see the film, and explore the heart of the mystery surrounding Stronheim’s Strange Factory.
To find out more about Strange Factories, the perks we are offering and to donate, click here. If you believe in this project please do let as many people as you can know about it. We are truly grateful for your support and look forward to you joining us on this project.
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Photography by Yiannis Katsaris, Director of Photography for 'Strange Factories'
A special thank you to Arban Severin, designer and maker of the Punch mask
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