The Cast

David Harewood in the role of the Pentecostal minister 'Abe', is best known for his roles as ‘David Estes’ in the Showtime series Homeland and Captain Poison in Blood Diamond. David recently played Oberon in Julie Taymor's A Midsummer Night's Dream, shot writer/director David Milch’s HBO pilot, “The Money”, and plays in the new series Selfie.

Edwina Findley portrays 'Melva', who struggles to keep her family together against impossible odds. Edwina, best known for her roles in the David Simon/HBO series The Wire and Treme also played the fiery role of ‘Rosie’ in Ava DuVernay’s Sundance Award-winning film Middle of Nowhere.

all film stills by DoP Ava Berkofsky
Other cast from the Memphis community include: Prophetess Libra, Preston Shannon, RayJay Chandler, and many others (that we can't include here)!

The Team

Writer/Director Jake Mahaffy, who has single-handedly made daring and experimental micro-budget shorts and features that play at top-tier festivals (Venice, Sundance, Rotterdam, and SXSW - at which he won the Grand Jury Prize for Wellness in 2008), was the first recipient of the Sundance Auerbach Screenwriting Fellowship for his Free in Deed screenplay. The script was worked at the Sundance Institute Writer’s & Director’s Labs and the Cannes Atelier. 

CLICK HERE to download a PDF catalog of Mahaffy’s previous films

Mike S. Ryan is the bold independent producer responsible for a remarkable amount of ground-breaking art-house films, including Todd Solondz’s Palindromes and Life During Wartime, Bela Tarr’s Turin Horse, Phil Morrison’s Junebug, Kelly Reichardt's Old Joy and Meek's Cutoff, and Rick Alverson's The Comedy.

From Mike:

“Free in Deed is a film about the search for grace; it’s about characters struggling through adversity to grasp a sliver of meaning and purpose. This tale is told in a manner unique to the CINEMA medium. This is not a cable pilot, not a stage play, and not a radio show driven by talk. Jake's perspective can only be expressed through the medium of cinema.

"I have been working to get Jake's vision up on screen for many years now. I am often asked why I keep making these kinds of deeply personal and challenging, true auteur films when the market-driven, American indie scene is so geared toward an endless parade of middlebrow mush. My answer is always the same: middlebrow mush is just not worth fighting for. It is not an option. What IS worth fighting for (and every film is a fight) is drama rendered visually with a unique author's perspective tied to significant social themes.

"The fact that there are so few American films of this type doesn't really deter us from making every effort to provide audiences with an original experience. I am deeply worried about the state of true auteur cinema in this country. The market mentality the American indie scene has been steering towards is producing one trendy market parrot after another. Where are the artists who have both talent AND something to say? What will come of them if there is no way to get their films made and recognized?"

Over the past 10 years Mike Bowes has split his time between producing independent features (Far From Afghanistan, The Greens Are Gone, Red Flag, Rubberneck) and primetime PBS series such as The American Experience, Frontline, and American Masters. 
 His award winning feature films have screened at Toronto, Locarno, The Viennale, Tribeca, IFF Boston and the Hamptons International Film Festival.

The Production

Free in Deed  wrapped production in Memphis, TN this past February, 2014. The small but devoted crew worked tireless six-day weeks to get the film ‘in the can.’ The funds raised to cover the shoot are not sufficient to pay for the post-production and sound design that is an essential part of this project – which is why we are launching this campaign!

Sound Design

The original sound design is a complex element that will be particularly work-intensive on this film. 

As Mahaffy describes it:

“My plan for the sound design of the film involves an interweaving of naturalistic, diegetic sound with an audio-narrative thread of non-diegetic, subjective worlds. Throughout the film we lose the primacy of the sync track and enter into the minds of the characters by hearing their inner experience and memories. 

"For Benny- a boy with a form of severe autism- the hyper-reality and painful, unmoderated volume of the natural world will give way to silence during the most intense episodes of sensory overstimulation. For Abe- the evangelist- the mundanity of daily life will give way to ecstatic sounds of prophecy, revelation and impending doom of the 'last days'."

What We Need

The funds we hope to raise through this campaign will be used to complete the film. The project is currently in the middle stage of editing and we hope to have picture lock around October 2014. We will put your support to the following needs (any additional funds will go towards promotion for the film, insurance, distribution, travel costs and fees) :

Post Production Sound Design and Mix	$30,000
Post Production Picture Color Correction and DCP Creation	$25,000