Production Begins !

By signing on with the International Documentary Association (IDA), actual production of Being Mennonite in America begins. It's exciting! After spending more than two years researching, the wheels are in motion to make this documentary happen!

But first things first. For production to proceed we need to get our budget in place. The budget for the first documentary stands at $772,544.00. Gifts and commitments amounting to nearly 25% of our budget have arrived in the first 30 days of production fundraising. With these gifts we are putting our production team in place, collecting archival materials and capturing on video the narratives needed to tell the Mennonite story.

Recently, we were in California where we interviewed School Resource Officer Jonathan Cardinalle with the Reedley Police Department. Officer Cardinalle works alongside MCC West Coast in the Reedley Peace Building Initiative to provide a restorative justice alternative to the criminal justice system for youthful offenders. It's one of the many stories we hope to include in the documentary. It's a example of putting the Mennonite penchant for peaceful living into real-life practice.

But we need to get our entire budget in place so we can continue uninterrupted with production.

This is where all of you come in. We need help in the form of major gifts such as those from two family endowments that are allowing us to begin production. And we need smaller contributions - lots of them - to help round out our budget. Can you please help make this documentary a reality?

Go to the donate page for instructions for making tax deductible contributions. If your company would like to be a corporate sponsor, contact me at burton@bullerfilmsllc.com.