Hello! Welcome to the IndieGogo fundraising campaign for Heist: Who Stole the American Dream, our feature documentary which reveals how American corporations orchestrated the dismantling of middle-class prosperity through rampant deregulation, the outsourcing of jobs, and tax policies favoring businesses and the wealthy. What sets "Heist" apart is the historical background it offers, providing a critical primer on the decades long assault by big business on the middle class, and the dismantling of policies over forty years, which had been implemented during the New Deal to keep Wall Street quarantined.   

Five years in the making, the timing of Heists completion has us deeply encouraged that the public is ready to tackle the very deep seated economic issues that have eroded quality of life for almost all working Americans (the 99%, as we are collectively known.) 

Heist had its World Premiere at the Mill Valley Film Festival in California on Thursday, October 13th to a sold-out, galvanized, and appreciative audience, followed by a second sold out screening on October 15th.  Due to popular demand, the festival added a THIRD SCREENING that next Sunday which also was at capacity.  The post screening Q&As were thoughtful, intelligent and engaging. We have been amazed and inspired by the incredible interest the movie has already generated, and are excited to see how it can be leveraged as an invaluable tool in the fight for economic justice, which was our primary goal.

We are Frances Causey and Donald Goldmacher - a filmmaking team that combines political activism/social justice filmmaking with investigative journalism. Frances was a longtime CNN journalist, and Donald a documentary filmmaker, psychiatrist and activist. Backed by a dedicated and talented team, Heist has been a labor of love for all who have contributed, with many working on a pro bono or deferred basis. This hasnt been about profits, but about using our skills and resources to inspire dialogue and effect change around the most pressing and critical issues of our time.  

What the screenings at Mill Valley proved to us - besides the fact that we have a movie that audiences are hungry for - is that our timing for its release with the growing Occupy Wall Street movement is truly inspiring and amazing.  We have decided to update "Heist" with hot off the presses video footage from OWS protests in New York City because we believe the mobilization is such a critical part of the unfolding story.  Please help us raise money to make this happen!

Overall, we believe that there is limitless potential for Heist and we are actively developing a distribution, outreach and engagement strategy for the movie that will bring it to as wide an audience as possible, and provide targeted screenings for activists, students, educators, policy makers, and other local groups.  

In addition to providing essential historical background, the final third of the movie has a Take Action section that will be of invaluable help to ordinary Americans who are baffled by what is happening to the world that they knew. It provides a framework for how people can begin to organize and create a new, green, sustainable economy, and how they can take themselves off the corporate grid by growing their own local economies. Our goal is for Heist to become an integral tool for the growing movement that is demanding economic justice, such as Occupy Wall Street, and other efforts that will emerge in the next years as a growing number of Americans become empowered by the force of an organized voice for change.

Throughout production, Heist was made through a combination of individual donors, a generous Roy W. Dean Film and Video Grant, and the willingness of our dedicated crew to work pro bono, for deferred payment, or for very reduced rates. We take pride in the resourcefulness with which it was made.

At the final stages of post production, however, there are unavoidable costs that are necessary to make a high quality movie that can have an impact in a variety of settings. These finishing costs include archival footage acquisition, sound mix, color correction, format conversion (industry speak!) and final output to a format that can be used for exhibition. In the past month, our costs have increased tremendously, requiring us to ramp up our fundraising efforts to make the best movie possible. In the very short term, we are looking to raise $10,000 to finalize the movie for wide-scale distribution with BRAND NEW OCCUPY WALL STREET FOOTAGE, and to create DVDs for festivals, distributors, potential partners and funders.

Our utmost thanks!!  A feeling of participating in what we hope will be part of a national movement for economic justice and reform!  And of course, many great rewards, which can be found in the right hand column of this page.