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Sholastic Kids Gorilla Summit

News from L.A and beyond!

This is one of my most successful trips to the US.
So far I have been to New York, Michigan, Chicago Minnesota, and Las Vegas and now I am in Los Angeles!

Upon good discussions with TRIBECA, there have finally been reinforcements in the plans to create the first film Lab that links our organizations, a move that has the full support of our government. These happenings place took place in the presence of Jane Rosenthal and Craig at an event that served to honor the President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame.  The guest list at this event bore names such as: Robert De Niro, Whoopi Goldberg, Kimiko from Quincy Jones Productions, Minister Joseph Habineza and a few other top executives from the business and
entertainment industry. This was truly a star studded night.

Our President, Kagame set upon briefly explaining Rwanda’s tremendous progress. He talked about the way that little and simple things make big changes in people’s lives in Rwanda today, the challenges ahead, East Africa federation opportunities and the countries potential…
By this time, the idea of our exchange program, TRIBECA, Rwanda Cinema Centre with the follow up of the Scholastic Press Corsp who had come to Rwanda had made a huge difference during the Gorilla Summit at Scholastic.

Further more it has been a week of meetings and seeking possible ways for Rwanda to collaborate with other companies (BET included). In Michigan, I visited Hope College where we formed a possible link with RCC. Students from the College may be coming to Rwanda to learn about our experience in return for some of our bright young ones to visit them and learn more about television and film. The college is well respected and some of their students have already visited Rwanda this year (they visited a children’s village founded by Floriane Nibakure).
From Michigan, we drove to Chicago… I loved Chicago!  It is a great city.
As we drove around from places to places, I was writing on, my comedy feature movie, Dudu goes to the World Cup. A very inspiring movie I must say, something to be enjoyed during the 2010 World Cup, so watch this space!

While in Minnesota I spent 3 days writing then headed to Las Vegas where I met with Grace, one of our board members at the Rwanda Cinema Centre in the US. Grace took us to see Circle Du Soleil, a show full of beautiful mystery! Wow, what a production that was, a must see for every one!  Here, 3 nights too were spent writing.
Next stop Los Angeles! My city, the city of cars and traffic, that I never seize love. The weather is like Africa’s!  So anyways there I was, Hillywood in Hollywood, attending meeting after meeting! I visited the Saddle Back Church, Larry Dean drove me to Orange County (almost 2 hours from L.A) a delicious drive it was, beautiful but exhausting! The next day, I had to meet the board and supporters of RCC: Monica, Phil, Jon and Amy. We had a great dinner and exchanged ideas, one of them being that we need to get some one to help RCC fundraise and mobilize at a greater level. The following day, Sunday I joined Phil and Monica at their house for a ‘movie night’, they had Super Blue-Ray technology Cinema! Exclusive, on the Carte was the film The visitor, a great film that was! Definitely needs to be checked out. Even more, before the film we were entertained with food and wine and a live concert by Bruce Springstein, the more reason to have a movie theatre back home, (the Rwanda Cinema Centre movie hall perhaps?!)

Monday the next day, more meetings took place. We met with the Academy of Motion Pictures, as they are interested in working with us. They plan to bring top American filmmakers to carry out training at the Centre. The Shoah Foundation plans to have Rwanda Cinema Centre as the
focal point for their training of videographers who will be asked to record the testimonies of Genocide survivors. Sundance is keen to have an exchange program with Rwanda Cinema Centre too. Dudu goes to the World Cup is set to be the first comedy script out of Africa into the Lab. Last but not least, the biggest achievement is and will be to have Morrison and Forester act as our legal council (part of this journey is helping us to get some of our legal work done). As an excellent last touch, Jane Kagon and Ed Greenberg also opened doors for us in that we met
high profile lawyer Kelly Crabb at Morrisson. Crabb gave us few minutes of his precious time to illustrate the happenings at the Rwanda Cinema Centre and our achievements.

As for now, I plan to go to Utah to investigate the shipping of the screens to Rwanda, and surprise surprise, to continue writing!

Keep tracking this progress, may be the next person to open doors; will be you!

Thanks for being part of the Journey so far!