Short Summary
Hi! I'm a Film and Television graduate from İstanbul, Turkey. Two years ago, during my education, I started a documentary project about Amsterdam's Coffeeshops. Being a tourist for several times before filming, I was already interested in the culture and after meeting some interesting people in the business, I started to get interested in the politics too.
I decided to make the documentary two years ago, after the closing down of the coffeeshops in Maastricht to the foreigners. The rumor was, a law is coming to the Netherlands that will forbid foreigners to enjoy coffeeshops. Most people believed that the events in Maastricht was the baby steps of this law.
I was in the Netherlands just a couple of weeks before the decision was made. I interviewed many people from different backgrounds such as coffeeshop owners, former policemen, journalists and so forth about the subject and their predictions regarding the law will pass or not.
Eventually, the law didn't passed after I returned back to İstanbul. Although foreign visitors can still enjoy coffeeshops, now there are other factors in play in order to minimize the amount of coffeeshops in the city. For example, because of a law that indicates no coffeeshops are allowed near 250 meters to a school, many coffeeshops had to close down their doors forever.
Now, I need your help to complete the documentary by filming the aftermath of the events that I filmed two years ago. I want capture how the government is still trying to close down coffeshops with new laws and regulations although they can't close all of them at once. In order to make a closure about my research, I want to explore what happened during those two years after the threat and how is the government is becoming much more conservative over the years.
What I Need
Two years ago, I went alone with two cameras and a sound recorder in my backpack and I stayed there for ten days. I have my own equipments to film and I will do the post production by myself too. Being a backpacker and a filmmaker at the same time, I only need the pay for my travelling and accommodation costs in order to finish the documentary. So, all of the money that that is funded here will be spent to:
Visa Application: 100 EURO
Plane Tickets: 250 EURO
Accommodation for 10 Days: 350 EURO
Food and personal needs (50 EURO for each day): 500 EURO,
Which is adding up to a total of 1200 Euro that I need to raise in order to finish this journey!
The currency is set as USD because i cannot transfer the fundings to my bank account in EUR according to Indiegogo. So after the conversion, it is adding up to 1355 USD.
The Impact
My personal and primary goal about this project is to create a feature length documentary about Amsterdam's coffeeshop culture, which will be a immortal way that will allow us to cinematically enjoy everything that surrounds it. Your contribution will be a support to create the film and spread it around the world for viewers to enjoy.
And that's all there is to it.
Thank you for your time and support!
You can contact me for more information and your thoughts about the project anytime from emretuncel90@gmail.com!