Abandoned Allies was my first film.
A lot of great things have been born from that experience.
My hope is that you’ll watch the 60-minute documentary by renting or buying it here: vimeo.com/ondemand/allies.
Here are five reasons you’ll enjoy Abandoned Allies:
- It’s narrated by WRAL anchor Bill Leslie.
- It’s a hopeful story of brotherly love born out of unlikely circumstances in war.
- It’s about a group of people called Montagnards, whom I hope you’ll appreciate meeting.
- It’s about our history as a nation and what we want our flag to stand for, which is still relevant today.
- It’s filled with my own shortcomings as a filmmaker, which I hope will inspire you to chase your own dreams.
On location while making “Allies” in 2011. (Photo taken by my sister.)
A little background about Abandoned Allies:
- It took five years to make the movie.
- The total run time is less than 60 minutes.
- We recorded more than 40 hours of interviews.
- We primarily used a Canon XH-A1 to record on mini-DV tapes.
- The film includes decades of archival footage from many different sources, creating a logistical challenge for digitizing.
- We spent hours scanning photographs taken by government workers, veterans, anthropologists, and missionaries who lived in Vietnam.
- We filmed in Washington, D.C.; Chicago, Illinois, various locations in North Carolina, remote areas in Wisconsin, and other locations in the United States.
- The film premiered in 2012 at IMAX Raleigh, and we self-distributed the independent documentary here in North Carolina – often to sold-out crowds.
- Making the movie helped me get through a lot of tough days as a first-time filmmaker but, more importantly, gave me a lot of respect for our veterans and political refugees. I’ll be forever grateful for the experience.
When you rent or buy the movie, let me know what you thought of it.
Use the comments to share what’s on your mind.