Filmmaker Livingston looks at death and loss

We do everything we can to avoid addressing the human fact of impermanence and death. Award-winning documentary filmmaker Jennie Livingston (Paris is Burning), who lost several close family members within a handful of years, now turns her storytelling skills towards her own experience of loss in Earth Camp One.

Livingston has launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise the funds to complete her film. In her appeal, she wrote:

"...I’m all for films that encourage people to act. But it’s surprising that just as social media and the blogosphere are revitalizing first-person storytelling (in ways that run from irritating to brilliant), first-person stories, in film, are a tremendous challenge to make. Companies, foundations, and investors fear that a work that’s “personal” is, by definition, not relevant to audiences or to broader social goals. In this way, film is trailing behind both conventional and Internet publishing; as when, thirty years ago, a memoir not written by a movie star or president was unlikely to find a publisher. Back then, the literary and commercial successes of best-selling memoirs by authors like Dave Eggers and Marjane Satrapi were unimaginable."

More cheekily, she posted this on her Facebook page:

"What is more cool than a film about impermanence and death?!!! Isn't that why 13 year old boys wear shirts with skulls???"

Learn more about Earth Camp One and support it on its Kickstarter page.