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Support the project:
Christmas in Darfur is an
independently produced
film funded solely through
the contributions of individuals
and organizations who take world affairs personally.

Your support is vital to the
success of this project. Every
single dollar is a great help,
so please don’t be shy; make
a donation of any denomination
below

Or, if you don't like this newfangled technology, feel free to send a check to our newly formed non-profit organization (this film being the first of many projects to come, all dedicated to increasing awareness and understanding of world affairs):

The Seventy-Seven International Foundation, Ltd.
2439 Ontario Rd. NW.
Washington, DC 20009

Additionally, if you'd like us to link to your site or blog, just let us know.
Questions? Comments?
Drop us a line: info@christmasindarfur.org

Our lovely supporters
(so far):

Eric Ottens, Tokyo

Lake County Press, Waukegan IL

Rick Song, Clincinatti, OH

Daryle Macoicha, Washington DC

Julie Mojica, Chicago

Z. Milak, Rome

Darkroom, Chicago

Bourbon, Washington DC

Catherine Dillon, St. Charles IL

Neema Enriquez, Washington DC

Jerome Gaynor, St. Louis

Kevin Ambrose, Homer Glen IL

Illinois Entertainer, Chicago

Winepress, Homewood IL

Matthew Myers, Chicago

The Mushuganas, Chicago

Emily Dennison, Chicago

Usama Alshaibi, Chicago

Kristie Alshaibi, Chicago

Kathleen Erickson, Carpentersville, IL

Jeff Ottens, Chicago

Mary DeRosa, Washington DC

must...ROCK!, St. Louis MO

Jeffrey Canfiled, Burke VA

Bruce Thompson, Smyrna GA

Andrew Streicher, Little Rock AR

Doug Donsbach, Knoxville TN

Adam Landsman, Patomic MD

Arlene Rosenbaum, Rohnert Park CA

Jeff Stidham, Walla Walla WA

Brian Teixeira, Downington PA

Jennifer White, Rowlett TX

Bert Mojica, Cicero IL

Sarah Crossley, Chicago

Vibhuti Hate, Washington DC

Toren Smith, San Francisco

Mara Zupsich, Los Angeles

Silas Dilworth, Chicago

Mark Rodekohr, Oakton VA

Liisa Hantsoo, Philadelphia PA

Joana L. McCracken, Reston VA

Greg Sanders, Silver Spring MD

Christine Wormuth, Arlington VA

Jonathan Gad, Mount Prospect IL

Barbara Mojica, Cicero IL

Simina Farcasiu, Roslyn Harbor NY

Carrie Maiorano, Mississauga ON

James Miller, Arlington VA

The Jawa Report, The Internets

Rachel Posner, Washington DC

Joe Torre, Atlanta GA

Pierre Chao, Washington DC

Craig Hutler, Chicago

Mary King, Alexandria VA

Joan Sladaritz, Streamwood IL

Kevin O'Leary, Chicago

Tanya Tarr, Washington DC

Mid Continent Corporation, Elk Grove Village IL

Leon Shahabian, Washington DC

Peter Jefferson, Chicago

Ky Henderson, Brooklyn

Lauren Liss, Chicago

Joshua Zucker, NYC

Ruth Lopez, Chicago

Ryan B. Thomas, NYC

Stephen Immerwahr, NYC

Braden King, NYC

Annie Tomlin, Chicago

Alan Richardson, Los Banos CA

Adam Andres, Carol Stream IL

Gabrielle Zucker, Baltimore MD

Alysia Kinsella, Chicago

Crystal MacKinnon, Chicago

Stephen Bagwell, Madison WI

Mary Beth Brennan, Washington DC

Anna Kolodziej, Norridge IL

Mia Park, Chicago

Jenna Rounds, Watertown MA

Roxxane Ong, Elmsford NY

Porochista Khakpour, NYC

Rod Scholl, Minneapolis MN

Brian Kinsella, Chicago

Robert Pietrusko, Malvern PA

Eugene Auh, NYC

Alexandra Geovanos, Belmont MA

Jason Tuttle, Los Angeles

Amy Kelly, Minneapolis MN

ThreeWalls, Chicago

Irena Basiura, Chicago

David Foster, Chicago

Alan Weiers, Minneapolis MN

Susan Franz, Chicago

Roy Wehrmeister, Skokie IL

Jamie Hayes, Chicago

Kenan Halabi, NYC

Lee Boot, Baltimore MD

Michael Sulmeyer, Santa Barbara CA

Roctober, Chicago

Meredith Yayanos, Rancho Santa Fe CA

Tammy Grunch, Wichita KS

Jason Chez, Vernon Hills IL

Ankush Goel, Chicago

Laura Keating, Washington DC

Tatiana Leneva, Alexandria VA

Andrew Gossett, Washington DC

Jennifer McReynolds, Chicago

Jeffrey Canfield, Burke VA

Ali-Mehran Khalili, Gonderange Luxembourg

Pirus Press, Glasgow Scotland

Julie C Berson, Falls Church VA

Catherine Wynne Hamilton, Greensboro NC

Thomas Devold, Alexandria VA

Robert Williams, Somerville MA

Gerald Epstein, Bethesda MD

Jennifer Pace, Laurel MD

Bunnyhop, Richmond VA

Aaron Lovell, Long Island City NY

Ameen Syed, Glendale Heights IL

Eerik Hantsoo, Cambridge MA

Cheryl Kernahan, Namao AB Canada

Patrick Keller, Portland OR

Scott Willis, Ottawa ON Canada

Debbie Stroman, Washington DC

Catherine Mason, Richmond VA

Raymond F. Dubois, Washington DC

Tanya Primiani, Washington DC

Paul McKay, Smithfield RI

Matthew Shultz, NYC

Walter Yoon, Woodside NY

David Scruggs, Washington DC

Melanie Faith, Schaumburg IL

Travis Elliott, Willow Street PA

Bates Gill, Clarksburg, MD

Aimee Bucher, Lake Villa IL

Steven Smith, St. Louis MO

The Royale, St. Louis MO

Kim Baynit, St. Louis MO

Dara Thomas, St. Louis MO

Jason Toon, St. Louis MO

Mark Early, St. Louis MO

Rachel Newman, St. Louis MO

Kelli Willams, St. Louis MO

Kelly Sullivan, St. Louis MO

Lauren O'Donnell, St. Louis MO

Jerry James Jester Jr., St. Louis MO

Deneva Grace, St. Louis MO

Tony Clark, St. Louis MO

Allison Trombley, St. Louis MO

Julie Fasbender, St. Louis MO

Susanna Yi, NYC

Gene Song, NYC

A. Rebecca Rozelle, St. Louis MO

Meredith Deegan, Algonquin IL

Mary Williams, Honolulu, HI

Owen Price, Alexandria VA

Jocelyn Spence, Farnborough UK

Richard Fairbanks, Washington DC

Tom Melk, Chicago

Jason Pickleman, Chicago

Jen Hughes, Minneapolis MN

Jackie Lorenty, Huntley IL

Greg Busse, Bensenville IL

Kammy Lee, Chicago

Roberta Howard, Oakton VA

Lyn Wigbels, Great Falls VA

John Schaus, Washington DC

Shinjiro Koizumi, Washington DC

Sr. Pat Doerr, OP, River Forest IL

Donna Spitler, Washington DC

Nathan Keay, Chicago

Emily Shultz, NYC

Olympia Fokta, West Chicago

Julie G Kelleher, San Antonio TX

Sarah Taylor, London

Adam Reeve, Duffy Austrailia

Doki-Doki Designs, St. Louis MO

Aron Packer, Chicago

Dave Rutledge, St. Louis MO

Rosamaria Garcia, Belvidere IL

Clare Ros, Chicago

David Razowsky, Los Angeles

Daniel Gregory, Arlington VA

Jordan Razowsky, Evanston IL

Amanda Mueller, St. Louis MO

Christina Mason, Washington DC

Sarah Taylor, London UK

Jill Tyler, Washington DC

Charles Sutherland, Kensington MD






































  

illo
Christmas in Darfur: A film by Jim Milak and Jason Mojica. Produced by G. Ryan Faith and Rachel Razowsky 

If you were one of the poor unfortunates of the world and busy choosing between starvation and being shot, 1984 was a very good year. You all remember the massive Live Aid promotion with “Do they know it’s Christmas” coming out in 1985 raising a whole raft of cash for Ethiopian famine relief.

Unfortunately, in the intervening two decades, the marketing viability for dying brown people has plummeted…

Donor fatigue ('.. for the price of a cup of coffee per day..') and disaster oversaturation has set in, in a very big way, numbing the public. And after Somalia, Haiti, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cote d'Ivoir and Iraq, governments are either overcommitted, or governments have realized that there is absolutely zero percentage for them in stepping in to try to stop the bloodshed. They catch hell domestically ("No Blood For Oil!”, “Wag the Dog!”) or get pictures of the corpses of 19-year-old kids getting dragged through the street. Or even if, against all odds, they manage to put a stop to the bloodshed they don’t get a damn bit of credit for doing so.

What this means is that the marginal value of each life has effectively dropped to zero. Kill 5 people, kill 500, kill 500,000 - it makes no difference - each added fatality has absolutely no policy impact and won’t change the situation one iota. It’s not that as many as 500,000 (essentially an entire Seattle) have died in Darfur; the horrific thing is that they could kill another 500,000 and nobody will bat an eyelash.

How can the dead of Darfur compete with dead soldiers, Brittney Spears, Afghanis, and Iraqis for media coverage? Well, one thing that has changed a lot since 1984 is the advent of the internet, viral marketing, and meme propagation – the entire dynamic of word-of-mouth propagation.

So, we've decided we are going to Darfur this Christmas in order to shoot a film. Since people don't seem to be responding to yet more Tear-Jerking Movies about how terrible things are, we’re going to try to connect to the audience by interviewing the people from the US and Europe - folks like you and me and your cousin and your uncle and your sister - who have volunteered for little or no cash to go spend their Christmas away from their families in the middle of some hellhole trying to stem the tide of genocide.

Now, to think that a single film is going to have some sort of world-changing impact is, frankly, absolutely delusional. However, we hope to make use of the new dynamics of media to make something that will help return the spotlight to Darfur, and give those concerned something to nucleate around. But, if you recall the flooding of the Mississippi some 10 years ago, or more recently 9/11, and Katrina, and all the people who dropped everything they were doing, to go help, it’s those countless individuals who all chipped in to make a difference. And it’s those people we want to reach.

So, in any case, we’ve begged, borrowed, and scraped together enough cash to go, and we’re committed to the trip. However, fighting has started to intensify in Sudan and is spreading into Chad. War zones are ruinously expensive and are cash-only. So, what that means is that while we can actually get there, the proposition of getting enough security to arrive in a war zone with a lot of camera equipment and cash on hand is going to be an expensive and risky proposition. We are trying to raise enough to move this whole project from the realm of suicidally stupid over to regular, plain old risky. Think of it like raising money for body armor for aid workers in Iraq, rather than dropping into a firefight to check out the local cuisine.

We’re going, and being the selfish bastards we are, not only do we want to make the experience gunshot-wound free, we would also like to make it back with all of our kit and equipment. We’ve gotten a lot of support from people have volunteered to do all of the time-consuming and costly editing, production, post-production, sound, and all of that good stuff to take footage and turn it into a movie. Now we just need to go get the footage. And if you want footage about Darfur, the only place to get it is well... Darfur.

So, if you can help out with a couple of bucks, click on over to the PayPal button on the left side of the page. In any case, we certainly appreciate any way you can help contribute.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. Go to the site. Post it. Link it. Pass it on.

And if you can, please help.

 

 

  

Upcoming Events:
Join us at one of the following locations for the first look at our film:

Washington DC
December 20, 2007:
Bourbon
2321 18th St. NW
Washington, DC
8pm - $5
Guest DJ Laura Burhenn

Chicago
December 17, 2007:
The Hideout
1354 W. Wabansia
Chicago, IL
8pm - $5

St. Louis
December 23, 2007
The Royale
3132 Kingshighway
St. Louis, MO
314.772.3600

Teaser:
Have a peek...

Blog:
We went, we saw, we filmed...now what!? Get the answers at the Christmas in Darfur Blog:
Christmas in Darfur Blog

TV Appearance:
See the filmmakers on Chicago Tonight with Phil Ponce...

Radio Interview:
Listen to an interview with Jason Mojica on Chicago Public Radio's Vocalo.

 

Past Events:
We hosted several events to raise funds for the first stage of this project. Watch this space for upcoming events including the screening of the rough cut of the film. But for posterity, let's remember the good time we had in...

Chicago
October 15, 2006:
The Mushuganas, Winepress, and DJs Rebecca Crawford & Emily Dennison of The Dials

Sunday, Oct. 15th, 2006
8pm-2am
$10 / 21 and up
Darkroom
2210 W. Chicago Ave.


Washington, DC
November 15, 2006
DJs Neville C. and D-Mac, plus a very special happy-hour set by Jason Mojica pitting two of the greatest crooners of our generation against each other: Frank Sinatra and Glen Danzig. Additional performance by Matthew Shultz.

Wednesday, Nov. 15th, 2006
6pm-1am
$5 / 21 and up
Bourbon
2321 18th St. NW
Washington, DC

St. Louis, MO
December 7, 2006
St. Louis - December 7

Join Mark Early, Jason Mojica, Jason Toon, and Jerome Gaynor at The Royale as they spin their favorite punk, funk, and other junk. Proceeds from drink and dinner specials will go to Christmas in Darfur and Reporters Without Borders.

Thursday, December 7th, 2006
The Royale
3132 Kingshighway
St. Louis, MO
314.772.3600