After raising over $20,000 via Kickstarter last year, the Whitelandia documentary is asking for an additional $27,000.
Last year, we blogged about the Whitelandia Kickstarter—and continued to cover it as the production grew increasingly complicated and contentious:
Last May, Alberta residents Matt Zodrow and Tracy MacDonald collected $21,528 via Kickstarter to fund Whitelandia, a documentary about “Oregon’s sanctioned discrimination against black Americans.”
Zodrow and MacDonald told backers they were working with “black American communities, individuals, and organizations” on the film—but at least one of those individuals, Walidah Imarisha, says the filmmakers used her image without permission in a promotional video and planned to use “my timeline, my research, and my analytical framework” as the “spine” of the film.
“This situation, where my work as a black female scholar has been used by two white filmmakers without conversation, credit, compensation, or control, reeks of intellectual colonialism,” Imarisha wrote on her blog. (Via.)
Filmmakers Matt Zodrow and Tracy MacDonald now claim to need an additional $27,000 to continue working on the film. (Weirdly, though, 10 percent of Whitelandia‘s Indiegogo donations won’t even go towards the film—instead they’ll go to KBOO, which is apparently “the media sponsor for the Whitelandia Indiegogo Campaign.”) According to their Indiegogo page, Zodrow and MacDonald still plan on finishing the film in “late 2015.”
When we first blogged about Whitelandia‘s initial crowdfunding campaign, I wrote that the project was “worth a look.” I’m not saying that now, for obvious reasons.
That said, the Mercury will review Whitelandia whenever it’s finished—and we’ll try to keep an open mind about the final film. There’s no question that there’s an important, insightful documentary to be made about the complicated issues Whitelandia is attempting to cover. Whether Zodrow and MacDonald are capable of making that documentary… well, that’s a whole other question.
Race baiters turned con artists. Just shocking, I tell you….shocking.
And I’ll say this every time this comes up: they still owe people money from the brief period that “The Famous Mysterious Actor’s Show” was on teevee. So maybe they can use some of the money for that.
It won’t matter one bit if they make it or not. Portland is the most deeply rooted racist city, I’ve ever lived in, and I lived in Georgia for four years. It is the least diverse city as well. I’m not race baiting, code for not acknowledging racism, code for systematic racism, but Oregon was the last state to grant rights to blacks to own property. Educate yourself before you come off like you have shit for brains. Remember folks, Portland was founded on slavery in the form of shanghai, and prostitution. The dark roots haven’t changed much, and it’s a subject that no one wants to honestly, and openly discuss, hence the systematic racism. Signed an American.
Willing to bet someone named John Shadwick didn’t really add to the diversity of Portland either…
Look out folks, you’re arguing with someone who writes sentences like “Portland was founded on slavery in the form of shanghai, and prostitution.” and “Signed an American.” So he’s obviously really smart, is what I’m saying.