I always get excited when I see a Kickstarter project happening close by. Being local doesn’t automatically qualify a project as being worthily outstanding, but it’s worth some points. Today’s project was actually brought to my attention by my facebook newsfeed, when the project’s creator shared her idea and asked for the support of her friends. I’m pleased to say that her shout-out worked, drawing me into a project that I’m now convinced is completely worth backing, not just because it’s happening nearby, but because it’s creative, interesting, beautiful and maybe even thought-provoking. All things I look for, regardless of geography or personal connection.

Duvid is a short film by Chelsea Rebecca and a cast and crew of 30 other University of Michigan film students, exploring the turbulent life of a young man caught between two very different worlds.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/918435110/duvid-short-film

In the world of Hasidic Judaism, a man is expected to be married with children by the time he reaches his early twenties. As he reaches this age, Duvid Stern begins to feel immense pressure from all sides to settle down and find a wife. Sensing that perhaps this is not how Duvid wants to spend the rest of his life, his best friend Yoli introduces him to the underground world of Electronic Dance Music. It is here that he meets Lindsay Miller, a fun-loving rave girl who is just as intrigued by his strange customs and manner of dress as he is by her Technicolor hair and party-hard attitude. However, as Duvid falls for Lindsay and the techno rave lifestyle, he begins to sense that there is more to Toba, the quiet girl from back home who everyone expects him to marry, than the typical Hasidic housewife he first judged her as.

So what happens when boy meets techno meets girl meets God? Duvid will find out, and with a creative cast as vast as the one responsible for this film, I think we’re in for something special.

The film will be premiering at the Traverse City Film Festival, which draws quite a crowd in this little state of mine every August. I hope to be in attendance and will be proud to know that I helped bring this story of song, spirit and strain to life in some small way. Join me in that goal by backing Duvid before March 6.