Wild Movie Journey
Hooker muggings, a transformed country and soccer: World Cup documentary is reborn
Longtime CultureMap readers may remember Our Man in South Africa, a series of stories written by Houston native Gerardo Chapa during his trip to document the 2010 FIFA World Cup. He recounted hooker muggings and thefts at traffic lights and spoke of lessons learned, but that wasn't the end of it.
After months of filming on site and editing in London, the project — then called 20/10 — was derailed when Alex Flick, the documentary's co-director and co-producer, was involved in a car accident in California.
"When I first saw the footage, I couldn't stop watching. It had been playing out in my head for two years."
While Flick recuperated, Chapa moved on to other places and other projects, but he never stopped thinking about the unfinished work. Last year, he flew to England to recover the footage from Flick's family's country house, where it had been left in storage.
A couple of hours and a hundred some-odd pounds in taxi fare later, he had his hands on the hard drives — only to find out upon his return to the U.S. that the disks had been corrupted. There was just a 50/50 chance of recovery, but computer technicians worked their magic.
"When I first saw the footage, I couldn't stop watching. It had been playing out in my head for two years," Chapa told CultureMap of the story, which follows five characters as they prepare for and experience the 19th annual international soccer event.
Calabash: The Road to the World Cup — which is now more than halfway funded through Kickstarter — requires just $14,000 in funding to complete post-production work. Chapa hopes that it will be complete in time for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.
"I think this would be a nice retrospective. There are so many similarities in the two countries," said Chapa, referencing the socioeconomic differences and racial relations that plague both.
"The film has an overarching theme of unmet expectations, what happens when people hinge so much — emotionally or economically — one one event . . . There's something to be learned from that."
Watch the teaser below, and find more information on the film's Kickstarter page:
