With a new year ahead of us, Cross Purposes Productions looks to the past to find an impactful and incredibly relevant story that needs to be told right now. On a trip to Europe, David Alford, founder of CPP, came across a museum exhibit in Normandy, France about a small group of university students in Munich, Germany, who risked their lives to take a stand against the consuming encroachments of the National Socialists Party spearheaded by a new Chancellor known by many as “Der Fuhrer”. These young people of faith watched as their homeland degenerated from a beautiful, peaceful, haven for all Germans, into a dark and sinister pit of hatred and bigotry.
Their consciences and the fighting spirit of their outspoken father wouldn’t allow them to sit back and watch Hitler poison the minds of those around them. Instead, they fought back, not with violence, but with their ideas. The common marketplace of thinking had been largely closed down. Children began spying on their parents. Neighbors reported neighbors who spoke out against the new Nazi Party. There was no place for dissension anywhere. These students wrote and published a leaflet known as “The White Rose”. In it, they dared to say what many were thinking. They spoke out against tyranny and racism. They called out for moral clarity and justice and began secretly distributing these leaflets all over their university campus. The response was immediate. More editions were created each growing in popularity and number. Soon they were traveling to other campuses and surrounding cities with more leaflets than ever. But as their voices grew, so did the danger. The Gestapo began hunting them down. Their ideas had become a threat to the reigning institution and had to be silenced at any cost.
This is a dramatic story of high risk and incredible self-sacrifice and a tremendous example of how many German people tried desperately to stop the Nazi invasion that would lead to the death of over 50 million people.
There are still many fascist regimes around the world and more are being formed now. They are not always born through political revolutions. But rather through a subtle loss of one freedom after another until the nature of a people is altered. This serves as a cautionary tale to all countries.
To produce a story of this epic size is beyond the resources of CPP. But, there is interest from large-scale producers in making this story. It has been determined that the best way to get this project made is to produce a short film and use it as a proof of concept for the full-length production. So that is what we are doing. All of the scripts have been written and contacts are being made to shoot a short film this year. But even a short film that does this story justice is expensive. CPP is sinking all available resources into this project, but we’ll need additional help.
So we are starting a Kickstarter campaign beginning Jan. 31, 2025 to raise additional capital to support this short film. We will have only 30 days to raise the $20,000 additional funds needed to shoot the film. As with any Kickstarter funding project, if the money is not raised by the deadline, no money is collected at all and the campaign is canceled. It is a challenging proposition. We’ve never tried anything like this before, but we are counting on the support of family and friends to get this started. If the project has an early and responsive start, the Kickstarter algorithms will pick it up and show the campaign to far more people on its platform giving it a much better chance of success. So our best chance is to encourage people we know to give at any level they can ($25, $50, $100, or even $1,000) at the beginning of the campaign. And that is what you’ll be seeing over the next few days. CPP is waving a banner of support and encouraging those around us to support this project early! And we hope you will do just that on Jan, 31, 2025. If you would like to see this project made and potentially be picked up as major motion picture, this is the path forward. We hope to see you this coming Friday. If for some reason you can’t support us financially, you can help by spreading the word about the campaign. Forward and share the posts so that others can help as well.
You can donate starting tomorrow at 6am Friday Jan.31at the link below. The campaign ends Feb. 28!
http://www.kickstarter.com/profile/wrose
The world needs more heroes like the students of the White Rose. This film can inspire them.
