*(Los Angeles, CA) — Filmmaker Matthew Cherry has launched a Kickstarter campaign for his new animated short film, “Hair Love.”
Hair Love centers around the relationship between an African-American father, Stephen, his daughter Zuri, and her hair. When his wife becomes unavailable, Stephen is faced with having to do his daughter’s hair for the first time, and soon discovers that her hair has a mind of its own.
“This story was born out of seeing a lack of representation in mainstream animated projects, and also wanting to promote hair love amongst young men and women of color.” states Cherry. “I’ve been thinking about this project for couple of years now, but it wasn’t until I started coming across a lot of viral videos online of black fathers interacting with their sons and daughters that I finally had the confidence to try and make this a real thing.”
He adds, “You don’t see the black family dynamic that often in mainstream animated projects. I hope that this film will help change that.”
Cherry plans to utilize a slick, computer animated style reminiscent of Pixar-hits like Toy Story and Finding Nemo. 3D-artist Jason Marino will co-direct the film with Cherry who also wrote the screenplay. Illustrator Vashti Harrison created the initial 2D Character Designs.
The team launched their Kickstarter campaign on Monday July 10th. Thanks to the tremendous support, they met their first milestone within the six days.
“The response has been fantastic. People are sharing the link and then sharing their own curly hair stories with their dads or even with their kids,” shares Cherry. “It’s wonderful to see this story connecting with people. It’s also incredible that we’re growing love and pride for natural curly hair and showing love to black fathers who don’t usually get a lot of love in mainstream media.”
“We want to keep it going,” Cherry adds. “Our goal was set for $75K but now that we hit our initial goal we have our sights set on $200K. The more we raise, the better quality film we can deliver.”
The Hair Love Kickstarter campaign closes on Wednesday, August 9th at 8p PST. For more information, please visit: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/matthewacherry/hair-love-animated-short-film
###
ABOUT THE FILM:
Hair Love is the forthcoming animated short film about an African American ather trying to do his daughter’s hair for the first time.
Hair Love, is a 5 minute animated short film that centers around the relationship between an African-American father, Stephen, his daughter, Zuri and her hair. Despite having long locks, Stephen has been used to his wife doing his daughter’s hair. So when she is unavailable right before a big event, Stephen will have to figure it out on his own. This sounds simple enough, but we soon come to find that Zuri’s hair has a mind of its own.
This story was born out of seeing a lack of representation in mainstream animated projects, and also wanting to promote hair love amongst young men and women of color.
Kickstarter campaign launched on MON 07/10/17. For more information, please visit:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/matthewacherry/hair-love-animated-short-film
ABOUT MATTHEW A. CHERRY (@MatthewACherry):
Chicago native Matthew A. Cherry is a former NFL wide receiver turned filmmaker who played for the Jacksonville Jaguars, Cincinnati Bengals, Carolina Panthers and the Baltimore Ravens.
In 2007, he retired and moved to LA to pursue a career in entertainment landing work as a production assistant on over 40 commercials and as an assistant director for over 20 music videos. Matthew received his first credit in 2008 when directed a music video for R&B artist Terry Dexter.
Since then he has gone on to direct music videos for Michelle Williams featuring Beyonce & Kelly Rowland, Tweet, Jazmine Sullivan, Lalah Hathaway, Kindred The Family Soul, Snoop Dogg, The Foreign Exchange, Bilal, N’Dambi, Maysa Leak, Dwele, Najee, K’Jon and Take 6.
In addition to directing music videos Matthew directed the short film entitled This Time starring Reagan Gomez-Preston & Terri J. Vaughn and recently released a new short film entitled Forward which premiered on Ebony.com. Matthew also writes & directs web series like the award winning series “Almost 30” and “Almost Home”.
Matthew is also a feature filmmaker and first feature film The Last Fall starred Lance Gross, Nicole Beharie, Vanessa Bell Calloway Keith David, Harry Lennix and Darrin Dewitt Henson. The Last Fall made its world premiere at SXSW Film Festival and received awards at the African American Film Festival (ABFF) for Best Screenplay and Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival (MVAFF) for the HBO Best Feature Film Award. After a limited theatrical release The Last Fall was acquired by Image Entertainment in Fall 2012 and made its television premiere on BET in December 2012 and is currently streaming on Netflix Hulu
Matthew’s latest feature film 9 Rides premiered at SXSW 2016 in the Narrative Spotlight category and stars Dorian Missick, Omar Dorsey, Robinne Lee, Xosha Roquemore, Amin Joseph, Skye P. Marshall, Thomas Q. Jones & Tracie Thoms and is about a Uber driver who gets life changing news on New Year’s Eve.
source:
Eseel Borlasa // [email protected]
Tracy Nguyen-Chung // [email protected]
We Publish News 24/7. Don’t Miss A Story. Click HERE to SUBSCRIBE to Our Newsletter Now!
