When Ripon native Kurt Sensenbrenner made his first trip to help Father Wally Kasuboski in Panama in 2011, it had an immediate — and lasting — effect on him.
“I fell in love with the area,” admits the young film maker, adding that when he returned to America, he had 35 hours of footage to sift through.
Five years and five trips south later, Sensenbrenner has got a lot more than 35 hours recorded.
The 2007 Ripon High School graduate believes it now is time to turn it into a documentary, so others can see the good work Father Wally is doing in Wacuco and Torti, Panama. It is here that Father Wally has spent a lifetime trying to create safe, drinkable water supplies for the people of southern Panama.
If completed, the film will be called “De la Misa a la Montaña — From Mass to the Mountain.”
But Sensenbrenner, who now does freelance film work in New York, needs a little help to reach this goal. A Kickstart, if you will.
He is in the midst of raising $30,000 via Kickstarter.com, a crowd-sourcing website aimed at fund-raising worthy projects.
He’s got a way to go, though. With little more than two weeks remaining in the campaign, Sensenbrenner has raised a little more than $5,000 of the $30,000 needed to fund the project, or about 17 percent of the total.
If he doesn’t reach or surpass 100 percent, he’ll receive nothing.
Read the full story in the April 2, 2015 edition of the Ripon Commonwealth Press.