The Zabaleen Project

ZABALEEN IS INDIEWIRE “PROJECT OF THE WEEK”

zabaleen — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 18:14:22 +0000

Just when we think our friends, fans, and family have shown us the most love possible…. You surprise us yet again.

Thanks to you, we were recently named IndieWire’s “Project of the Week”.

There is one more step that we will need your help for though.

At the end of the month, IndieWire will host another poll where we will be up for “Project of the Month”. The winner of this title gets a free consultation from the Sundance Institute.

We would love to get this opportunity and with your continued help and support, we are very confident we can do it.

Thank you all so much again. We are so grateful.

Zabaleen Needs Your Help (Again)

zabaleen — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 22:38:35 +0000

This past week we were pleasantly surprised to be featured as IndieWire’s “Project Of The Day”.

As we mentioned, voting would open today….

And it has.

So we really need your help in the voting.

If you have a Facebook page, its as easy as a click of the mouse.

If we win, we would be qualified for “Project Of The Month”!!!!

This would be massive for our film and we would be forever grateful for your vote.

So please log on and vote for us here: http://www.indiewire.com/article/vote-for-project-of-the-week

Thank you so much!

Zabaleen is IndieWire’s PROJECT OF THE DAY

zabaleen — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 15:35:23 +0000

We are surprised and honored to be featured as IndieWire’s PROJECT OF THE DAY today!

Please check out the page and leave a comment about the film. Also, at the end of the week there will be a vote on “favorite Project of the Day” where we could win some really great opportunities thanks to IndieWire.

We Can’t Thank You Enough

zabaleen — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 15:15:28 +0000

Thanks to all of you, your donations and help spreading the word about our campaign…. we were able to raise 134% of our goal on Kickstarter! When the finally seconds ticked off of the clock, we had raised a grand total of $20,199!!!

We are still floating on cloud 9 right now.

We would also like to take a second to thank all of our supporters that came on board in the final stages of the campaign:

Casey
Filipe Pereira
Kelly O’Driscoll
Kevin Moreau
Nestor Marmol
Danielle Cosgrove
Manuel Santini
Kathleen O’Driscoll
Tommaso
Peggy Vermillion
Willem
Sophia AlMaria
Toni Lagana
Tarek Abu-Esber
Sally Theberge
Lana Shamma
Phil Weitzman
Dan Champion
Hilary Young
Md Rezwan Al Islam
Lucas
Elly Cardwell
Karen Rhodes
Frances Hall
Jill Pawlin
Danielle Lobosco
Jonx Rainer
Melinda Williams
Hamida Al-Kawari
Bal
Elizabeth Fosnight and Steve Shipley
Reem Al Daghma
Amanda Burr
Dale McCarthy
Kellen Quinn
Rana Khader
Hannah Webb
Yasir Khan
Dolores and James Kramer
Winnie Li
Laurene Leon

You will all be receiving an email from us within the next week requesting your mailing addresses and instructions on how to redeem your reward. Selections of photos, prints, and digital download links will be sent to you after we receive your mailing information.

We would also like to address the questions we are receiving about “declined” or “bounced” payments through Amazon. Most issues are to do with expired cards or insuffiecient funds but others can be the bank “flagging up suspicious activity to your account”. Amazon has assured us that they will continue to attempt to recitfy the payments for the next 6 days.

If you have any other problems or questions, please feel free to email us at any time: zabaleenproject@gmail.com

Thank you again for all of your support.

It means the world to us!

-The Zabaleen Team

We did it! (But we still have more time)

zabaleen — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 18:43:24 +0000

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

With your help we reached our initial goal of $15,000! We did it with a little over 2 days remaining. We are over the moon right now. But we still have time to raise more toward the film. The more we raise, the more we can do with the film.

Please keep spreading the word: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/justinkramer/zabaleen-a-documentary-film

We are also very happy to announce the addition of Associate Producer, Peter Webber. We are so happy to have such a great filmmaker and friend support us the way he did.

Marcelina Dances

zabaleen — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 01:13:53 +0000

2 year old (twin), Marcelina loves Egyptian music. She stares at the tv when the video clips are on. And when the music plays loud in the kitchen….. she dances.

Nikita “Zabaleen” Postcards

zabaleen — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 23:42:11 +0000

As many of you have seen, we commissioned NYC based artist Nikita Shoshensky to do original pieces of artwork for the film. The drawings are a part of our Kickstarter rewards.

A $1000 donation will get you a limited edition, hand numbered and signed print of one of the 3 drawings
A donation of $5000 or more will get you ONE OF THE ORIGINALS!!!!

We know that is a lot of money so we used hi-res scans of the drawings and made postcards to send to our backers who donate $25 (a reward of a postcard signed by the crew) or $50 (a postcard signed by the crew AND MOURAD).

The prints came out amazing.

We took a stack of them to Egypt with us and Mourad very happily gave his autograph to 60 of them.

If we reach our goal of $15,000 in the next 5 days, you can expect one of these in your mailbox shortly after.

Please visit our Kickstarter campaign here: http://kck.st/n1qmEH

5 DAYS LEFT

zabaleen — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 18:21:15 +0000

We have reached the crucial time in our Kickstarter campaign.

There is only 5 days left for us to reach our goal of $15,000 in 40 days.

We have currently raised $10,111 through 67 extremely generous donations from incredible people like yourself.

We would like to personally thank all of our new supporters:

Lauren Nelson
Nina Tecson
Hend Fakhroo
El Jouhari
Ikaraam Ullah
Matt
Carrie Raukar
Mike Wendt
Vida Chang
Robert Nield
Sean Cusack
JP Dean
Anna Stockton
Muna Salloum
Moftasa
Amir Scandar
Reem Shaddad
Reem Saleh

We really appreciate your support of the film. It’s because of people like you that we are as close to our goal as we are.

We still need your help to spread the word though. There is after all only 5 DAYS LEFT!!!!!

LOOK FOR MORE UPDATES, PHOTOS, AND VIDEOS SOON.

New Screen Grabs

zabaleen — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 22:46:27 +0000

We just went through 15 hours of footage that has been shot over the past week and pulled some screen grabs so you can see what we are seeing.

Hope you like them!

Updates from the Mountain

zabaleen — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 21:25:42 +0000

Our much anticipated trip back to Cairo has been underway since November 4th.

We returned to round out the filming with Mourad and his family as we enter the post production phase.

As usual, we were greeted with more than kindness from the family but some things stood in our way.

On the second day of the trip, director Justin Kramer was arrested while filming. Mourad and 4 of his sons were also detained by the police and underwent nearly 5 hours of interrogation and intimidation from the police. Eventually, they were all released with no major repercussions other than the destruction of that day’s footage.

Staying strong, the team continued on and have been capturing some amazing footage.

To see more production stills from the past few days of filming check out this link.

We would also like to thank our newest backers on Kickstarter:

Megan
Hind Mezaina
Shaima Al T
Stephen and Jill McCarthy
Nive Das
Yosra
Zach Baker
Deborah Mansfield
Kim Tresohlavy
Sonya Shaykhoun
James Rawson
Dina
Alexandra Lauro
Faiza Ambah
Kath

We really appreciate all of the support you (and others) have shown us on Kickstarter.

We currently have 51 backers and are at 57% of our goal with just 14 days left. We still need a lot of help but we remain optimistic and extremely appreciative of all the support we have received thus far!

Please help us to continue to spread the word about the campaign! Your help is so important.

Thank you all so much and we will continue to update you all on the progress of the campaign and the filming.