Veteran filmmaker Warrington Hudlin, producer of such iconic films as “House Party,” “Boomerang,” and HBO’s “Cosmic Slop” television program, is launching a groundbreaking TV series centering on the Motor City’s human right to water, and needs your help to make it happen.
Hudlin’s “The Siege of Detroit” is a fictional episodic television drama developed in a production partnership between African-American and Chinese American producers.
Always a staunch advocate and programmer for filmmakers of color, Hudlin has, as informed by his crowdfunding campaign, “formed an alliance with a multicultural group of filmmakers and actors who reject the false dichotomy between social concerns and popular entertainment. This alliance is expanding by extending invitations to our audiences and viewers.” Even fellow veteran filmmaker Michael Moore (“Bowling for Columbine,” “Fahrenheit 9/11”) has pledged to promote this campaign to his 2 million plus Twitter followers.
So what is “The Siege of Detroit” all about? In the show, social justice activists occupy a church and appeal to the United Nations when the city starts turning off water to people who can’t pay their bill. The fictionalized drama is inspired by current events in Detroit and their battle for clean water.
What makes this drama different is that “The Siege of Detroit” will be the first episodic television drama where the central characters are grassroots and net roots human rights activists. Despite sounding like it lends to it, Hudlin makes clear that, “this is NOT a documentary, docudrama, or reality show but a straight-up fictionalized drama.”
The Indiegogo campaign page also goes a bit more into who these activist characters are: “Some of these principal characters were social justice activists back in the 70’s which left them coping with varying degrees of post traumatic stress. When they are challenged to build an activist alliance with millennials (some of whom are their children and all of whom are their children’s age), the story becomes a cross-generational drama as they fight back together against the privatization of public services and its consequences.” Working out of an abandoned church in an attempt to provide social services no longer provided by an economically hard-hit Detroit, this multi-racial and cross-generational coalition of activists descend into a collision course with, “corrupt politicians and a hostile police force that only serve greedy corporate interests. The ticking clock of the pilot season is a countdown on their appeal to the United Nations to intervene and guarantee their human right to water.”
You can find the campaign on Indiegogo and check out Warrington Hudlin’s passionate crowdfunding trailer below, also featuring Hudlin, members of the cast, and actor/musician Bowlegged Lou, and support this worthwhile campaign and project that only has a few more days to get funded.
https://vimeo.com/196365491
