March, 2007

Dear Friend,

Reading the Landscape is a multicultural, multilingual, innovative, animated, 25 minute educational film for kids of all ages. This film, which has been in development for 10 years, will be available for distribution to schools, educational TV, and to individuals worldwide. I am delighted to report that the first cast film shoot, which included more than 50 people of 21 ethnicities and languages, took place on June 3, 2006 in Franklin Canyon Park, Los Angeles. At the end of September, 2006, I traveled to Cambridge Bay, Nunavut (North Pole), to film Eskimos, and to the Navajo Nation (New Mexico) to film Navajos in November. The second Los Angeles film shoot took place on March 3, 2007, in my studio in Venice, California, in which we were fortunate to have representatives of Kenya, Tibet, India, China, Hong Kong, Britain, Israel, Egypt, all reading and writing in their respective languages.

At this time, the film launch budget ($84,000) has been provided by a matching grant of $30,000 from The CLASS Foundation (Colorado), which has been generously matched and exceeded by Panavision Inc ($20,000), California State University, Dominguez Hills Foundation ($15,000), Mountain Recreation Conservation Authority, Los Angeles ($3,000), as well as numerous private donations. Having been invited to apply for the CLASS Foundation grant was indeed a great honor, as CLASS has only funded “hard science” in the past, i.e. effects of medical research on specific diseases. As an enlightened foundation CLASS is fascinated by the multidisciplinary nature of the film contributing to fundamental cross-cultural education, one of the possible roads to world peace. Sponsors of the film will receive worldwide recognition in the credits of the film as well as on the packaging.

I have been gratified by the diverse interest and support that the project has elicited, such as the endorsement by Steve Price, (CBS News), as well as NPR’s interest in doing a story on the film when it is produced.

This film utilizes a combination of “hard” and “soft” science and art to educate viewers about the relation of humanity to nature, the origin of alphabet, the process of perception and cognition, the relation of alphabetic form to the shapes of neurons; facilitates reading of at least 12 languages, shows the viewer the location, architecture, habitat, arts and music of each of the cultures represented; demonstrates that no matter which culture we may hail from, we, as humankind, are more alike than we are different, etc  - all in an entertaining, surprising, fun-filled experience.

One of the beauties of this film is that it can be used anywhere in the world with only a graphics change on the package. As more and more representatives of cultures hear about this project, more and more wish to be represented. I, therefore, can see this as a series. But first the prototype must be made.

One of the key requirements of the CLASS grant is that the film be clinically pre and post tested with a variety of age groups in various socio-economic venues to ascertain efficacy of affect. To achieve this goal, I have been privileged with the involvement of Dr. Steven Frieze, a nationally recognized expert in instrumentation and evaluation, who is donating his time, staff, materials and expertise to this project.

Other key crew members in this project include award winning animator/designer/Professor of Design at California State University, Dominguez Hills, Michele Allan, as well as award winning filmmaker/editor/composer/Professor of Film at UCLA, Eric Marin, Grammy winner singer/songwriter Michael Silversher and Joy Sikorski, and renowned musician David Zasloff.

Our illustrious Board of Advisors includes: Stuart L. Brown MD (Founder and President, The National Institute for Play); Karen Comegys Wortz (Teacher, 40 years, Shenandoah Street School, Los Angeles, CA); Joanie Freckmann, (Principal, Colfax Avenue Elementary School); Steven Frieze, PhD (Executive Director Institutional Research and Planning (Retired)California State University, Dominguez Hills; Loren R. Grossman, M.S., J.D. EdD; Ruth Weisberg (Dean, Roskies School of Fine Arts, USC).

My first hour-long video, Cosmography: The Writing of the Universe has received kudos internationally and is used as the basis for course work at universities, institutes, etc and is also used therapeutically by psychiatrists and therapists.

Film Description: A group of “all-American-dressed” multi-ethnic children and adults walk in nature, (i.e. Caucasian American, African American, Native American, East Indian, Israeli, Palestinian, Zulu, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Mexican, Tibetan, Inuit i.e. a plethora of alphabets and cultures). The children, and then adults, begin to recognize patterns in nature in trees, roots, rocks and shadows that trigger associations with letters in their respective alphabets, as in the old game of “can you find the pirates in the tree”. As the letters are “recognized”, they almost imperceptibly, begin to glow slightly, then are actually animated and are perceived to “fly” – first to an image of a neuron that reflects the shape of the letter, then to an animated map of the globe, respective country, city, house, living room, where the child and adult are seen reading a pop-up book of that culture and language, the “flown” letter arriving and settling into a word on the page. The architecture, furnishings, costumes, food, etc will demonstrate cultural taste and tradition, and music of the respective culture will accompany the episode. We then return to an urban representation of that culture, for example, Little Tokyo in Los Angeles, to show how the culture is kept alive in the Diaspora. Not a language-specific film, the names of the country, city, and words for house, mother, father, book, etc, will appear on the screen in a variety of alphabets, while the letter is “flying”. Similar sequences pertaining to various ethnicities follow, each being catalyzed by a different, and surprising trigger.

California State University, Dominguez Hills, where I have been Professor of Art for 34 years, has set up a tax deductible foundation account for the Reading the Landscape film project.

If you are interested in supporting the development of Reading the Landscape, donations can be sent directly to:

Gilah Yelin Hirsch,
Project Director,
California State University, Dominguez Hills
CSU Foundation
1000 East Victoria Street,
Carson, California, 90747
310-243-3966
ghirsch@csudh.edu

Checks can be made payable to: Reading the Landscape Film, Gilah Yelin Hirsch P.D.
Credit Card donations can be arranged by calling: Gloria Mendez, Director Grants and Contracts Administrator Foundation, 310-243-3058; or email gmendez@csudh.edu.

I do hope that this project may interest your support. I would of course, be delighted to discuss this further.

Sincerely,

Gilah Yelin Hirsch
2412 Oakwood Ave,
Venice, California, 90291
310-821-6848
gilah@linkline.com
www.gilah.com