I'm Fine

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For years I’ve been making experimental films with deeply personal themes, as well as intimate social issue documentaries. In 2017, I began a new project addressing some mid-life existential questions in collaboration with dancer/choreographer Peter Carpenter. Through the lens of dance and cinema, I’m Fine explores trauma, compassion, privilege, and the vulnerability associated with our own imperfect reaction to pain and global suffering. It further examines how these concepts function today in our digitally mediated world. I’m Fine will be a 20-minute non-fiction dance film featuring the exceptional performers Margi Cole, Lisa Gonzales, Matthew McMunn, and Peter Carpenter. Primary shooting was completed in summer 2019 at various locations around Chicago. With this campaign, I’m raising funds for post-production and exhibition expenses, which will enable us to complete and share the film widely. With your help, I’m Fine will be finished in early 2020 and hopefully screened at film festivals, galleries, and independent theaters around the globe.

About This Project

When I entered middle age, life began to feel harder, lonelier, and more uncertain. My parents died, I struggled with illness and finances, and I recognized an ugly new identity growing in myself reflecting victimhood, fear, and self-preservation. I questioned - How much of my private pain do I share with others? How do I process the daily stream of tragic images and stories I consume from around the globe? Does the media’s virtual remapping of geographic proximity promote my empathy and compassion, or leave me feeling helpless and numb?

The themes in I’m Fine feel deeply connected to the ways that I believe dance and cinema can uniquely explore the seemingly contradictory issues of private/public, personal/universal, entitled/underprivileged, power/fragility, and detachment/compassion. I believe that a dance-for-camera project that utilizes documentary aesthetic conventions might be an especially apt vehicle for research in that it reveals the body as a physical site of injury and frailty, as well as a psychological site which holds memory and trauma. Throughout I’m Fine, the dancers are represented as whole human beings—rather than de-personalized moving bodies. They shift from scripted theoretical dialogue, to rigorous formal choreography, to vulnerable accounts of personal suffering in the form of both words and physicality. We learn about their concerns, fears, and private histories. 

After my 2012 collaboration with Peter Carpenter on the music and dance film FANFARE for MARCHING BAND, featuring Mucca Pazza, I was enthusiastic about embarking on another artistic partnership with him. Initially inspired by several of Peter’s stage performances, I'm Fine embraces the unique concerns of reshaping live dance into an original filmic work. We completed primary shooting this past summer with a passionate crew of roughly twenty local makers, including Michael Weldon as Director of Photography, Rachel Rozycki as Line Producer, and Ellie Hall as Production Coordinator. Your financial contribution will be of immense help in covering post-production and exhibition costs, including a composer’s fee for original music for the soundtrack, external hard drives, website programming, DCP production, motion graphics, color correction expenses, film festival submission fees, and more. Any amount is truly appreciated. I feel this work is important and begins a conversation on healing through self-reflection, compassion, and shared experience. Thank you for helping I’m Fine reach a wider world.

Thank yous

Contribute any amount or choose from the levels below.

• $25
  Thank you in film credits and on social media ($25.00 is tax deductible.)
• $50
  Above + DVD of my film "Fanfare for Marching Band" featuring the band Mucca Pazza with choreography by Peter Carpenter ($40.00 is tax deductible.)
• $75
  Above + DVD of my film "A Heretic's Primer on Love & Exertion" featuring Trevor Martin & Kym Olsen ($55.00 is tax deductible.)
• $100
  Above + two VIP seats for the Chicago premiere of "I'm Fine" ($60.00 is tax deductible.)
• $200
  Above + exclusive "meet & greet" with Danièle during a creative post-production work session (either in person or via Skype) ($160.00 is tax deductible.)
• $300
  Above + 2 VIP invitations to the Chicago film premiere party for "I'm Fine" with cast & crew ($240.00 is tax deductible.)

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Danièle Wilmouth

Make a Wave Artist

Danièle Wilmouth is fascinated by the unconscious choreography of ordinary life and how cinema can reveal the miraculous spectacle of the everyday. She creates hybrid forms of film, video, installation, and live art that explore ritual, pattern, monotony, and impermanence. …

View Danièle Wilmouth's profile

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• Thank you to the following for contributing to 3Arts with the recommendation that we support this project.

  • Steve Richards

  • Margi Cole

  • Trevor Martin

  • GRETCHEN WILMOUTH

  • Meagan Carroll

  • Sanghoon Lee

  • Andrew Barton

  • Pittsburgh Youth Concert Orchestra

  • Steve Summers Summers

  • Sharon Tomasic

  • Rachel Rozycki

  • Hope Celani

  • Irina Botea

  • Anonymous Supporter

  • Daniel Nearing

  • Annette Elliot

  • Phoebe Sheng

  • mark jeffery

  • Aniceto Perez

  • Phil VanOuse

  • Emma Rozanski

  • carolina gonzalez

  • Anonymous Supporter

  • Ines Sommer

  • Gonzalo Escobar Mora

  • Elisa Menendez

  • Anke Loh

  • Shirley TerMolen

  • Judd Morrissey

  • Debra Tolchinsky

  • Carrie Hanson

  • Alla Kovgan

  • Mary Patten

  • Tirtza Even

  • Chloe McLaren

  • Matthew McMunn

  • Bonnie Brooks

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