Town Videographer Tom Sadowski videoing Lincolnville School's Sprint Solar Car races
May 2001

So What is Happening with the Lincolnville Bicentennial Film Project?

Tom Sadowski Answers:

Over a year ago the Lincolnville Bicentennial Committee gave me the green light for one of the most ambitious projects to celebrate the bicentennial. I proposed producing a novel documentary about Lincolnville using 10 professional filmmakers from Maine. I mean how hard could it be to write up a dynamite proposal for a fabulous project, send it off to many foundations and get a bang-up show funded? Well, apparently more difficult than I figured.

After, months of pursuing grant after grant from foundation and corporation ; after jockeying position to achieve nonprofit status; after polishing proposal and plans, I've got only a pile of rejection letters to show for my efforts. The letters are very nice and professionally written. Most all of them state that our project seems worthwhile. Some even go so far as to express regrets that their organization could not fund the project but the bottom line: no money.

Well, there is some money, I managed to raise $1,000 through T-shirt and hat sales but for the kind of project I had planned, that kind of money was just enough to cover tape stock. At the last Bicentennial Committee meeting I reported that no funding had been obtained and I was abandoning the project as planned. At some point you just have to stop going down the path of dead, beaten horses and try a new road. It's too bad because the subject was great, the team that was assembled was excellent and the idea for the program had great potential.

However, the project is not completely dead. Back when I took on this project I told the committee that they would get something on tape about Lincolnville if I had to make the video myself. From here on, I will be switching my efforts to "Plan B" which involves producing a few shorts about Lincolnville and the way things are here in 2002. It will not have the depth and variety that my proposal envisioned and it may not have the national appeal but I have assured the Bicentennial Committee two things: that 1), it will be about Lincolnville and 2), that it will be amusing.

Program details haven't been finalized but I will be editing together some old and new shorts about Lincolnville about various and unrelated topics. I would like to invite the community to participate. You can contact me to work on the production crew or if you have a short piece to contribute that deals with life in Lincolnville, I would be pleased to review it for inclusion in the final cut. The down side to this offer is that instead of this being an under-funded project, it is now a non-funded volunteer project.

Please call me at 207 763-4540 or write me an e-mail at sadowski@tidewater.net if you would like to participate.

Thank you.