Linehouse Productions is proud to announce the Dead in the Desert Benefit Concert at Sky Bar on Saturday, Aug. 4, from 7pm–midnight to help support the upcoming release of the humanitarian documentary Dead in the Desert, a film about migrant deaths in the Sonoran Desert.
The producers are ready to show the documentary to a national/international audience, but need your help getting there. To help cover promotional costs and film festival entrance fees, Linehouse Productions is holding The Dead in the Desert Benefit Concert featuring Gabriel Sullivan, and dub & bass till midnight. Various sections from the documentary, Dead in the Desert, will also be shown during the benefit.
The event is $10 at the door and Sky Bar will continue offering happy hour drink pricing until midnight in support of the Dead in the Desert Benefit Concert. 100 percent of door proceeds will go to Linehouse Productions to help bring the issue of migrant death to a national/international audience through promotion of the documentary.
Producers Austin Counts and Devlin Houser spent a year (2011-2012) filming at the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner (Pima County OME) as medical investigators worked to identify and repatriate the bodies of two suspected migrants: one found in Arivaca, Ariz. and one found on the Tohono O’odham Nation on June 26, 2011.
Dead in the Desert also takes the viewer on the migrant experience through northern Mexico – from towns like Altar, Sonora, Mex., where 90 percent of the economy depends on migrants, to migrant shelters on the U.S.-Mexico border in Nogales, Sonora, Mex., where visitors plan their next move across the border or back home. The documentary follows the maintenance of Humane Borders water stations, which migrants depend on while traversing the Sonoran Desert.
The producers recently graduated from the University of Arizona with degrees in journalism. In the true spirit of independent documentary film-making, and considering today’s rapidly changing journalism market, Counts held a kickstarter.com campaign in March 2011 in an attempt to keep working on an issue close to home: immigration across the Sonoran Desert. From the kickstarter.com campaign, Counts raised more than $2,500 to extend footage on a student-produced border-issues film he had directed.
The original segment featuring the Pima County OME was only slated to be six minutes long. However, once shooting for this segment began, Counts and Houser knew they had something important and decided to embark on an ambitious, all-original project entirely from scratch.
For more information about the Dead in the Desert Benefit Concert, please contact Austin Counts at (520) 808-8531 or austincounts@hotmail.com or or watch the preview at www.deadinthedesertmovie.com. Links to parts 1-4 are found on Page 2. All footage is for screening purposes only, and may not be published or reproduced without prior written consent from Austin Counts.
I heard Austin speak at a recent Odyssey Storytelling event this past Spring on March 1st, and his story about the filming is gripping. The number of migrant/border crosser deaths along the Arizona/Mexico border is disturbing. Attend this fundraiser at Sky Bar, 536 N. 4th Avenue to find out more.
carolynclassen 