Critical Weekend for Pro-Life Film
Part One,
Part two
By Rai Rojas,
Hispanic Outreach Director
Editor’s note. Please send me
your thoughts at
daveandrusko@hotmail.com.
As many of the readers of
Today’s Views and News know, “Bella,”
the pre-eminent pro-life film of our time, has
been surprising critics and the movie industry
for weeks. While in limited release, “Bella”
has been a huge success,
but this coming
weekend “Bella”
goes
into much wider distribution.
Turnout this weekend is pivotal.
It will determine whether or not the distributor
will keep the film for another week and make it
a part of the Thanksgiving holiday movie
schedule -- the busiest moving-going time of the
year. .
Sean Wolfington, executive
producer of
“Bella,”
says it best:
“Bella did so well the
distributor is doubling the theaters but … this
weekend is do or die … and we need your help.
“If we do well--we will get a
wide release during the busiest season of the
year--Thanksgiving! If not… we will be cancelled
from theaters before the holiday.
“The good news is that Bella is
the #1 Top Rated Movie in the US according to
Yahoo, Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes & New York
Times Readers Poll and what we really need is
your help in promoting it.”
Allow me to please encourage you
further to support this film. If you have seen
it once, go again, and take friends and family.
There’s more you can do to help
promote “Bella.” Go to
www.bellathemovie.com which will show
you how you can help get our message out to an
audience than may otherwise not hear it.
If I may I’d like to tell you
about how I came to know and to love
“Bella.”
My exposure to
“Bella”
began almost eighteen months ago.
From the start, I knew that this was something
special.
I had been invited to speak at a
conference in Mexico City during the last days
of winter of 2006. As a resident of Michigan, I
looked forward to the visit south as well as
going to one of my favorite cities in the
world. It was a conference hosted by the
leadership of Mexico’s pro-life movement and
many of us from the United States were invited
to give an American perspective on the issue of
abortion.
As with many similar conferences,
the host committee always finds things for the
attendees to do during non-working hours. On our
second night there, we were invited to watch the
very first screening of a movie.
There were about 25 or 30 of us
who packed into vans for a ride through Mexico
City to a small private theater in the center of
town. When we were seated, some of the
principals gave us an introduction to their
project.
What sticks in my mind is their
insistence that they were all interested in
making movies that “made a difference.” The
director then took a picture of us seated in the
screening room so that he would have a keepsake
of the first people outside the production
company to see his film.
The theater darkened, the screen
lit up, and as the final scene ended ninety
minutes later and the name of the movie finally
becomes apparent, we knew we had just watched a
life-altering film. There was a second of
silence followed by a thunderous cheer. Through
the muffled sniffles and the wiping of tears
from our faces, we stood and applauded the movie
“Bella.”
Those of us gathered there, who
for so long had fought and continue to fight the
battles in the war to end abortion, had just
seen a movie that not only deeply resonated with
us, but also made our best arguments for life
without ever having used the word abortion.
That was 18 months ago. A few
weeks ago I was in Miami for the world premiere
of “Bella.” The movie was shown at the
old Olympia Theater, now the Gusman Center for
the Performing arts in downtown Miami.
During these 18 months,
“Bella” has been screened in many cities
across America. The film was shown at two
National Right to Life Conventions. It has won
the prestigious Toronto Film Festival, and its
producers and actors have been honored by the
White House, the Smithsonian Institute, and by
other organizations.
Now the little movie that can is
on the verge of actually doing it. Please help
these truly heroic and courageous film-makers by
getting out to the theaters this weekend.
Please find listed below the links that explain
how and where you can help out “Bella”
and, in turn, quite possibly save a life.
That website again is
www.bellathemovie.com.
Thank you!
Please send your comments to Dave Andrusko at
daveandrusko@hotmail.com.
Part Two
