What happens when you’ve just slipped the Iron Curtain with a military truck, homemade kayaks, and a plan to paddle unrun rivers throughout Central and South America? You get one of the greatest river-running road trips of all time, which a pair of eastern movie producers are planning to immortalize in a documentary.
Sonia Szczesna and Adam Nawrot are a Polish-American filmmaking team based out of Trenton, NJ, whose production firm, Sourland Studios, focuses on the intersection of commercial and non-fiction filmmaking. Now they’re setting their sights on making a feature-length production of the Canoandes ’79 expedition, chronicling one of the greatest paddling road trips of all time. And they’ve already created a trailer that is turning heads. (Check it out here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sourland/canoandes)
“It perfectly blends our passion for adventure, filmmaking, and Polish heritage,” says Nawrot.
To complete the project, the two have launched a Kickstarter campaign, which is already 72% funded with 27 days remaining. But they need more help.
“We’ve been working hard to secure pre-commitments for our Kickstarter launch, and it looks like we’ve got enough people on board to be able to start with a real bang,” Nawrot says.
The movie will delve into the backstory behind a team of Poles who ventured to Central America in 1979, running more than 30 rivers in a two-year span, including 23 coveted first descents of such classics as Mexico’s Usumacinta, Costa Rica’s Pacuare and Ecuador’s Rios Quijos. The trip culminated with the first descent of Peru’s harrowing Colca Canyon, billed as the deepest canyon in the world.
“It’s going to be a great film,” says Nawrot. “But we can use all the help we can get.”
Kickstarter link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sourland/canoandes
Kickstarter short link: tinyurl.com/canoandes
