Learn Something: Book of Advice Edited by Greenpoint Filmmaker

This post made possible by an anonymous donation to our Writer’s Fund from Greenpoint Area Man.
Greenpoint based filmmaker Jessica Edwards knows that she can learn a lot from her fellow filmmakers and believes you can too.

She is currently using the crowd-funding site Kickstarter to help realize her latest project TELL ME SOMETHING, a photography and creative advice book from fifty of the world’s best documentary filmmakers.

Jessica says:

Documentary filmmakers are a rare breed, they’re creative, persistent, they’re master storytellers and each film they make is like a graduate degree in their chosen subject. Some of them have spent over 60 years making films, and along the way they’ve learned a lot about how to balance life and art.  They’ve got insightful advice for people in any creative field.

Her campaign is about 50% realized as of the date this post goes up. I personally think helping local Brooklyn makers of all types is a good and easy way to help create culture and unity. This will be my eighth Kickstarter project I’ve funded and it’s always great to be a part of someone’s fully realized goals.

And for $40 you get a beautiful book.

Jessica has a broad background in the film industry as a director, producer and publicist. In 2010, Jessica marked her directorial debut with a film called Seltzer Works, a documentary about the history and decline of the glass bottled seltzer delivery companies that used to thrive throughout the U.S. in the early 1900’s. Her film documented Brooklyn’s own third generation seltzer company, Gomberg Seltzer Works, which still makes deliveries to this day. The film screened at festivals worldwide and aired on PBS’s documentary series POV.

Jessica went on to make a short film called Tugs, a documentary film about another local NYC industry: tug boats. The film “is an ode to the hardest working boats on the waterways and the people who pilot them.”

I met Jessica in Greenpoint in 2006 when she was the roommate of the girl who eventually became my wife.  I got to know her pretty well and learned how determined she is in all life challenges including trying to prevent me from becoming the third roommate.  I eventually won that battle but I’d like to think that I helped her move on to her own place where she could realize these recent string of successes.