Furrow also has a long and varied acting career, having performed since the age of five in church productions and the like, receiving her first paid role as a teenager with Music Theater Louisville. She has since attended conservatory at G.A.T.E. in New York City and worked in Off-Broadway performances and Broadway fundraisers. Her fifteen-year production career was primarily in the theater, although she has more recently turned those talents to film, co-producing various projects with Zahnd, including
A Wish For the Dead
and various shorts.
Breath of Heaven
is her first screenplay, but she has been writing stage plays since her teens.
When it comes to creative themes, Furrow is highly interested in interpersonal relationships. “Love is love, friendship is friendship, hate is hate,” she says, “but all have different levels of how those feelings could be expressed, and how society views all of those levels of feelings.” In the film, she also hopes to explore the idea of women's roles: “no matter how much we as women want to be treated equally, we also want to be romanced and loved classically.”
Breath of Heaven
is currently in pre-production. The filmmakers will be holding auditions at the end of June with plans to begin filming in September. In the meantime, they are working on finalizing plans, tweaking the screenplay, and, perhaps most importantly, fundraising. This is where you come in: Zahnd and Furrow are utilizing the popular crowd-funding site Indiegogo to attempt to raise $30,000 to produce the film. While this is an incredibly modest sum for producing a feature film, often independent and locally produced films will try to make do with a much more minimal budget, or practically none at all. While much of the money raised will be put towards adding production value – making sure the film looks as professional as possible – it is also important to Furrow and Zahnd to be able to pay those who are involved in the production of the film. Many times indie films will be produced purely on a volunteer basis, with the cast and crew receiving screen credits and experience as payment, but, says Zahnd, “part of our goal here [is] to prove that indie filmmakers can raise a budget and pay the people who work on the films. Independent film can be sustainable if the effort is put forward by the filmmakers.”
You, dear reader, can help to make this vision a reality. $30,000 may sound like a lot to you and me, but the filmmakers ask you to give what you can; every dollar counts, and indeed, the donation of a mere dollar will receive online acknowledgment and score you a ticket to the film's premiere. Other donation levels and the corresponding rewards are detailed at the Indiegogo campaign site. Complete information about
Breath of Heaven
can also be found at the film's official website and its Facebook page.
Donate. Spread the word. Support local film.
Image:
Breath of Heaven
official website
Breath of Heaven from Herschel Zahnd on Vimeo.
