Thank you for hitting the webwaves

Dear Viewers,
I looked at our stats for hits on our website and we have received over 6,350 hits since June 19th. On Sunday we received 1,900 hits alone!! Thank you for tuning in.

Sr. Rául Pérez Ureta

Great News! Sr. Rául Pérez Ureta will be joining our team. We just got confirmation today that he will be the cinematographer for The Closest Farthest Away. He is by the far the most accomplished of all us. He has shot over 40 features and shorts around the world, most notably for Cuban director, Ferenando Pérez, such as La Vida es Silbar and Suite Habana. La Vida es Silbar won over 17 awards such as the Special Jury Prize at Sundance, the C.I.C.A.E. award at the Berlin International Film Festival, a Goya for Best Spanish Language Foreign Film and Best Cinematography at the Havana International Film Festival. One of his more recent films, Madinusa, a Spainish-Peru co-production, won Best Cinematography at the Cine Cear Festival and was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema at Sundance Film Festival.

Our first non-family donation!!!!

Our friend Kirin gave us our first non-family donation(aside from foundations)! It was so heart warming to see one of our good friends support us, and so unexpected too!! Kirin makes good music which you can listen to at: http://kirinkapin.com/

Still Going

Barely out of bed, and at it again. Emailing away. That was Sunday morning and it is now Monday afternoon, West Coast time, and we still haven't emailed everyone.

While you were sleeping

Sage was compiling lists to email to people around the world, letting them know about The Closest Farthest Away and sending them our website. 2am.

Midnight oil

Me (Aleigh) up late at night, 4am, working on the website. Never again will I make a website in photoshop. It looks real nice but the logistics are painful. When I wanted to take a break I documented my growing insanity!

You send it

Monday June 18th 2007 I signed up for the $5.99 monthly you send it account. You can send up to 2GB of information. I emailed Yasef telling him he could send the digital material this way. He says that Cuba's internet is too slow, would take years to upload to site.

Missed Connections

Saturday June 16th Yasef's friend missed her plane going to Japan. Naoko has now left for the states. The handoff didn't happen. Tape is now being sent from Japan to US.

Cuba-->Japan-->Us

Sunday June 10th, 2007 Yasef is going to send dv tape with a friend going to Japan where Yasef's wife is, Naoko. Naoko is flying from Japan to the US and will send it to us when she gets here. This tape will be more well traveled than me by the time it arrives

Getting Started

Friday June 8th, 2007 Trying to do anything with Cuba is a lot of work. You would think that a country just 90 miles from the coast of Florida would be easy enough to collaborate on a project with. Here is an example: our Cuban counterpart, Yasef Ananda, recorded interviews of himself and Cuban Co-writer Agnieska Hernandez speaking about this project. We want to use it for promotional materials to fundraise. He tried sending it today through DHL from Cuba to US but DHL does not send dvds or cds from Cuba to US. We are exploring other avenues.