To the Filmmakers,

Thank you.

Thank you for using your gifts, skills and sweat to tell stories worth telling.

Thank you for shining a light on the good and the beautiful, and for introducing us to people worth knowing.

Thank you for the hope and inspiration your films have brought and keep bringing to me and to the world.

Thank you for the blessing you have been to the people you’ve filmed in the process, for the honor and dignity you gave them before the film was even finished.

Mission and Vision

As someone who believes in what you all are doing, loves what you are doing, is lifted up and inspired by the films you are making, I want to help share your work – to give the work a dignified space – commercial free – in the spirit of an online art gallery. Consider these virtual pages the gallery walls where your work can hang. A beautiful space with a specific purpose, where people can come just as they are, enter, sit down, gaze at, and behold beauty.

Yes, they can do this at your own web site. So why here?

Simply put, I think a collective showing of your work with other quality films of this genre tells a compelling story. Each film is like a pixel in a portrait which, were we to see the wide-angle view, would show one face.

In a world desperate to be reminded what a dignified and beautiful thing it is to be human, your films awaken our imaginations, inspire action, and teach us how to see. You are journalists for good, contributing to creating a culture of hope over fear. You remind us what an honor it is to bear witness to one another’s lives, and to offer ourselves as mirrors which reflect one another’s glory.

We. Need. You.

The dream

A dream was born within me years ago to create a place for viewers like me to come for a kind of one-stop shopping, an inspiration-station, a gallery of hope. A museum where many of your films can be shown in one place.

Even though this site will show the films I produce (a slo-o-o-o-w process), my role here is mainly as a curator for films of this genre, films which show the diverse expression of the beauty of our humanity. I want to collect and care for them in a kind of library, not just for now, but for the future, after you and I are gone. I want to begin the building of something – a collection which I hope others will want to add to, both in our lifetime and for generations to come: an online museum of humanity captured through the medium of film where people can come and keep coming to remember who we are and how beautiful a thing it is to be human.

Also my priority is that the site remain free from the distractions and clutter of advertising. Beauty matters. It matters like water, air, bread. Commercials attached to these films are to me, like graffiti on the walls of a cathedral. There are so many films worth viewing but if I can’t find the film without a commercial attached, it will not be posted on the main gallery walls.

I hope it’s obvious to you that the intention of this site is to bring attention to the stories and the artists. All the videos on this site will simply take the viewer to your own gallery and I will always give you credit. Please contact me for any corrections or requests for changes. I want to do good by you.

A Rant

Sharing your films is also my unapologetic attempt to engage in and contribute to the ongoing conversation of what it is to be human, to show not only how gorgeous we are when we say yes to Life – capital “L” – but to show real life examples of how being human is something we become more or less of depending on what we ingest, choose and practice. The degree of marketing and media we are bombarded with seems like junk food to me. It’s changing us, dulling and shaping our imaginations.

Your films, on the other hand, are like nourishing food for body, mind, soul. They lift and open up our hearts.

As thrilled as I am that we find ourselves in an era where artists can receive an income from their work “going viral”, we are in a moment in time where I believe a deeper reflection of what we are creating as a culture and as a people is not only worthwhile but essential. Many have entered such a contemplation and conversation. People like Nathan Schneider nathanschneider.info/, Tim Wu www.timwu.org/ and Anil Dash anildash.com/ , who are helping us ask important questions about who it is we want to become, to help open our eyes to how high the stakes are as well as to stimulate us to imagine what kind of future we want to create together. (Just the intro alone in Tim Wu’s book, “The Attention Merchants” is a game-changer.)

Hopes

My greatest hope for this site would be for people to spend time in the museum and leave perhaps more curious and inspired, not merely for what they might do, but more able to recognize the signs and wonders which are right in front of, in and around them in the exact lives they find themselves in.

This is the power of art, isn’t it? We want our work to evoke emotions which move people to make a change for the better, to take an action in the direction of service and generosity and in doing so, to become more fully human, living signs, live portraits for a world desperate to see hope manifest in real human beings, not merely those projected on a computer screen.

And finally, I hope by helping your films be seen, others will feel inspired and compelled to do their own looking, their own capturing, to take their own photographs, make their films, paint the pictures, write the stories, the poetry, the songs and music which tell, from their particular vantage point, about the glory they themselves bear witness to.

Finally, my dear artist friends, may I remind you of what you already know?

Make no mistake.
This is a revolution we are a part of.
Love Wins.
Beauty Saves.
Art matters.
So march on.
For God’s sake, March On!

In love and the utmost gratitude,

Linda