21: HURRY UP & WAIT

Have you ever been in #Miami traffic - or anywhere for that matter - where someone cuts off *in the middle lane* and speeds past you in order to get to a red light? That's what most of #filmmaking and advertising feels like. We need you to hurry churning out greatness, but the response won't come until an indeterminate but lengthy amount of time.

I know what you're thinking.

(eyeroll)

No one cares that you have to wait for a green light in an industry that is (weirdly) so coveted that the only ones you ever hear from may not be the most talented, just the ones who are best at holding their breath. There's a lot to be said for #grit, #stamina, #perseverance and just plain stubbornness, so, for this week's newsletter, I'm featuring the cover of my #limitedseries The Last Sibling that I started working on over 6 years ago. It's based on the real life story of one of my great aunts - Maria Edwards - who saved many children's and newborn's lives during the Holocaust. You have no idea how many people, from Endemol Shine Group in France to Fabula Producciones TV wing in Chile to other French production companies at the Festival de San Sebastián - Donostia Zinemaldia who claimed that: "No one wants to see a period piece about the Holocaust." Shame on them.

I, for one, do. And I believe I'm not alone.

If it weren't for the lovely people at the Museo Judío de Chile like Alejandra Morales Stekel Michelle Reich and other private testimonies of people who actually knew María, like her granddaughter, I would have been quite discouraged with the whole endeavor and the stupid excuses that production companies gave me. The fact is that these, like Betty and Marcel Frydman pictured here, were real people, not fake, imaginary people from a #metaverse. And I believe that the story of bravery, on the part of the children, as much as Maria's, is worth telling, and I daresay, spending whatever it's worth to retell the story as it so richly deserves.

So while, #JustbecoolMami, featuring Junet Morales & Noris Joffre , the short that we extracted from #SuccessentuLife the #featurefilm, zooms over the digital airwaves to our brilliant sound editor Milan Kovarbasic , we patiently wait and in the meantime, enjoy the artistic bonding that will happen this evening in #MiamiBeach at the Women in Film & Television - Florida (WIFT-FL) Happy Hour. I really look forward to these moments and am very grateful to Sabine Krausch and Bianka Krausch for organizing them and by doing so, helping to breath life into filmmaking community of South Florida.

Speaking of sparking VIDA into Filmmaking in South Florida, I had lunch with the awesome Jennifer Orta Castellanos last week to find out how else I can support her incredible initiative the Miami Film Lab , whose goals are the following:

-Raise Awareness - To elevate the profile of Miami filmmakers within the industry and with the public by making Miami films readily available on screen and online.?

-Provide Mentorship - To create opportunities for filmmakers to work with colleagues and industry professionals to elevate their work both practically and artistically.?

-Produce Films - To be our own gatekeepers and support the stories that reflect our community by raising the funds to produce films ourselves with budgets that allow for all crew members to make a living wage.??

Ideal? I think so. Perhaps we'll end up being like the Office national du film du Canada in Miami?

I don't want to spread myself too thin, but in the coming weeks, I do hope to do stage a reading or a brief run of my play The Guardian Angels with Stephen Eich and #CotydePablo (perhaps at GableStage with bari newport ) and there is the possibility of an #NFT #digitalart short #documentary specifically on #poetry and my brilliant friend Ana María Caballero who founded the virtual gallery #theverseverse. But all that is the life of the #producer, with many tricks - treaments, decks and scripts - up our sleeves.

Stay in touch and please, if you want to make a tax deductible donation to my film through Miami Film Lab, click here: https://miamifilmlab.org/fiscal-sponsorships/

Isabel x