Alien Boy: The Death & Life of James Chasse is the new film by Portland documentary filmmaker Brian Lindstrom. Brian's been at the doc game for quite some time now and maybe you've heard of or seen his last full-length project, Finding Normal:
According to the official website for the film, Alien Boy examines how:
In September 2006 James Chasse was tackled by three law officers on a downtown street corner before a dozen eyewitnesses. James was not suspected of a crime, he had not committed a crime.
The officers beat him, kicked him, broke 17 ribs and his shoulder. They used a Taser on him repeatedly. He screamed for mercy.
The officers thought James was a drug dealer, a homeless person, a non-person, a ghost. They were wrong. James was a poet, a musician, he had a family which loved him, friends, neighbors, dreams and hopes. He was an artist; a small, shy, gentle person. And he was a person with schizophrenia.
James was sent by paramedics to jail. Jail nurses refused to admit him. He died en route to a hospital in a police car driven by the same officers who had earlier beaten him.
A grand jury refused to indict those officers. The City and County refused to terminate or discipline them.
Alien Boy is a feature length documentary film about the life and death of James Chasse.
A massive amount of local PDX media coverage of the story and its continued fallout can be found here.
BUT...on to the main point of this post: Alien Boy is in the post-production stage of its existence at this moment. In order for the filmmakers to be able to present this important story to an audience, they need to raise additional funding for post. Lindstrom and company have decided to take their need directly to the people via Kickstarter, the popular fundraising website that's being used for the crowd financing of so many creative projects lately.
At the moment of this posting, Alien Boy has received pledges for almost a third of it's post-production funding via this Kickstarter campaign. More info about the film and how you can join the 70+ backers of the project via a financial donation of anywhere between $1 and $5000 (or more) can be found on the Alien Boy Kickstarter page.
More links:
The official website for the film.
The Alien Boy production blog.
Alien Boy's Facebook page.
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