by Matt Castagna
Teaching classes at Indian Bible College in Flagstaff was one of the highlights of my year. Students came from many backgrounds; Eskimo, Navajo, Apache, Inca, Lakota, and even a girl from jolly ole England!
On Saturday I had 11 students show up to help shoot a short film. In the morning we finished scripting the project and then in the afternoon we were out in a local park right on the edge of the mountains shooting the various scenes. We ended up fighting the wind (microphones don’t work well in high winds) and the ever changing (because of all the clouds) lighting conditions. But I must say, they did a great job and the resulting video looks great! On Sunday I attended a Navajo church out on the reservation. The rest of the day was spent editing the video together so I could leave them with something usable. We’ve been invited to go back in April to teach an advanced class.
Time for a brief update on some things we are working on.
An emphasis will be on mentoring/training projects for the next season. 
This fall we will begin of a series of film production workshops for young people in Eurasia – using mobile devices as the main production tools.
Trends in global youth culture tell us that the rapid creation and deployment of visual stories – by and for young people – is a key way that kingdom stories will be spread and witnessed in the future. We aim to train 100 young people (ages 16-24) to tell short visual stories using the tools they have in inexpensive mobile phones, smartphones, and desktop computers. It is all about empowerment and creating a groundswell of new storytellers who are not dependent on outside resources and who speak the language of their own generation.
Tags: Eurasia, mobile phones, training
Here is the first long trailer for our short film, Street Language. Enjoy! (And help support us by purchasing your own copy of the film via download or on DVD)
We are proud to announce the availability of Street Language on DVD – exclusively here on our site (for the moment.)
This is the complete 23 minute film. We also have a free downloadable discussion guide here.
We will also have news soon on other places the film will be available. We’re working with several sites for distribution via download.
The film is complete! We had a preview screening for our cast and crew in November and we are beginning to send out screeners for film festival submissions and to partner organizations. We plan to have a public premiere in January or February where we will invite the public to view the film and also to learn more about various ways to be involved in urban issues like homelessness.
The film has received wonderful reviews. The performances of our two lead actors, Luciano Munoz and Bryan Morse, were superb and moving.
Our next steps are to roll the film out properly with additional organizational partners like Joshua Station here in Denver. We do plan to screen the film at a few festivals to help get the word out. And we are looking at different delivery platforms to make the film available including DVD and VOD (video-on-demand) distribution.
We will have more news soon, including how and where you can view the film.