Canary In a Coal Mine Kickstarter Appeal

http://j.mp/canarykickstarter

We're raising money on Kickstarter RIGHT NOW to fund production of this important film. We want to change the stories we tell about Myalgic Encephalomyelitis ("Chronic Fatigue Syndrome")--forever. We want to show the true face of this disease.

How can you help? Share, share, share!

Then follow us at:

http://fb.com/canaryfilm
http://twitter.com/canaryfilm

Affects one million people in the United States.

Less than half the doctors in this country know the name of this illness.

I don't know of another illness like that.

This is probably the craziest story I have ever heard of in my life.

It was what should have been the happiest moment of my life. I was engaged to the love of my life.

I was a PhD student at Harvard. And then...WHAM! I had a hundred-and-five-degree-fever that lasted for 10 days.

The doctor had said to me, "Everything you're feeling is in your head."

I had a blackout. When I came to I couldn't read a word.

I disappeared entirely and no one knew why.

Among the people who hadn't a clue was me.

Except for the doctors, nobody doubted I was really sick.

It's a story that you need to see to believe.

Are you tired all the time? Tired. Tired all the time. I just slept all the time.

Why am I so darn tired all the time?

Chronic Fatigue Sundrome.

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

La Fatigue Chronique. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome?

No, that can't be right. You're too sick.

Hi. I'm Jennifer Brea. I'm Kiran Chitanvis.

And this is our Kickstarter Campaign for Canary In A Coal Mine,

a film that takes a look into the lives of people living with one of the world's

most misunderstood diseases - Myalgic Encephalomyelitis.

It's a disease suffered by a subset of people diagnosed each year with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

Had I not become ill with M.E. three years ago, I would have never believed the story

was possible. In order to make this film, we need your help. Take a look.

I was at a Chinese restaurant with some friends and when the check came

I couldn't sign my name. My brain was burning.

He said maybe I was stressed or depressed or sad or

most implausibly that I wanted to be sick.

We doctors are the most arrogant of professionals.

I've got the answer right here, ladies and gentlemen.

To everything that ails you!

We just don't have doctors going to guys and saying if you would change the color of your hair, you would feel better.

If you could, you know, get a younger wife, you would feel better.

Ones gotta insist that this is a physical disease, that this is not a psychiatric disease.

It's an acquired form of an immunodeficiency disorder.

If you go back historically, you can see illnesses very similar to this called

many different things. Toxins can insidiously creep in to every aspect of our

lives, flipping certain individuals who've might otherwise be resistant to an

infection. The severity of the illness is equivalent to

congestive heart failure. We think that there is very very likely to be some

sort of infectious culprit. It was just a

group of people, a committee that happened to be pulled together by the CDC that came up with this perfectly

horrid name, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

I was frustrated and normally I would write

in a journal to process my experience but I

had lost the ability to write, and so that's why I started filming these video

diaries, and it was really just a personal space to process what I was feeling

and to sort of deal with some of that anger

of no one knows what's wrong with me,

no one has a treatment for me

and everything that I love and care about

is slipping away.

You might saying to yourself, if I really couldn't

stand up, why would I be filming it? Well, I kind of

think that someone should see this.

As I dug deeper, I realized that my symptoms

followed a pattern and that there were millions

of people around the world who had my disease

As I shared my story on facebook, old friends

from college and high school sort of coming

out of the woodwork to share their stories.

They didn't have M.E. but they had other

chronic illnesses, auto immune diseases and

I started to realize that, you know, this is actually

a universal story. Our approach in making

this film is to give the audience a really

subjective view into the lives of people

with this disease. What we really want to do

is to bring the audience in and to make people

feel for the first time what it's like to

live with this devastating illness. It's just beyond any words.

The participants in the film are doing a lot

of self-filmed footage and it really gives

you a visceral view into their lives in a

way that you would never get by bringing a

film crew into somebody else's house.

Taking on a project like this is completely insane.

It's difficult to travel everytime we go,

you know, one hour from Princeton to New York, we

have to pack all of my own food. It's like

there's more gear for to take care of me than

there is like camera gear we're packing in the car

for the shoot. She conducts the interviews for most of the shoots

from a different room and conducts them over skype

through a teleprompter.

I can interview people whether I'm in the next room or at home in bed and, you know,

there's a crew halfway around the world shooting.

In addition to a few, new technological things we're gonna be trying out.

Some tricks up our sleeves. Got a few tricks.

The diagnosis of M.E. is really in a place

where something like epilepsy or multiple

sclerosis was a hundred to even thirty years ago.

And how many more diseases will this happen to unless our approach changes.

There's $16 million dollars in male-pattern baldness

and we got $3 million bucks going to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

My husband has asked me, you know, "Jen, what do you care more about, your health or this film?"

There's no way we're gonna go into the mall and show our numbers.

We can't even walk to the mailbox." (laughing)

Even though we often feel like, whatever it is that we are grappling with, no one

else can understand the fact is that we will

all have that experience of coming across an

obstacle that feels insurmountable.

There was a future you take for granted everyday

and never articulate to yourself and yet

it's always there and when you come down

with an illness that has no end, it strips

away that idea of a future.

When we're in that moment that everything

changes, how do we react?

When I got sick, he took care of me.

But I'd rather carry you around all my life than have anything happen to you.

We kept saying, you know, don't get discouraged, you never know what's around

the corner. Things can change.

I have this belief that if I can read a lot of science

and do a lot of self-experimentation that I can turn this

thing around. We believe in this story and

we're gonna do everything we can to see this

film happen. Yes, we would hope to be taken as seriously as male-pattern baldness

but I am not looking for any miracles here.

No one can promise a cure but one very important step towards that goal is

visibility. There are things that could be

happening today that would improve the lives

of patients with living with M.E. Visibility means more

research. It means not having to wait 5

years for a diagnosis. Visibility means not having doctors give you advice that

can cause you harm. Visibility means that people with

M.E. would no longer be forcibly institutionalized because

their doctor that has never heard of their disease.

Right now, to most of the world, we are invisible.

Fifty Thousand dollars is what we need to

make it through the completion of production and have a film that we're really proud of but to make the

film that we dream of, that's just the beginning.

And we're going to need a lot of help to get there.

Kickstarter is an all-or-nothing campaign

and if we don't reach our funding goal, then

we don't get to keep any of what we have raised.

Up to this point, we've shot about a week's

worth of footage and just imagine what we

could do with the funds to shoot four weeks, six weeks, and to do it not just

in the New Jersey-New York area but around the world.

We want this film to have such an impact that I could walk up to anyone on the street

and say, "Hi! I'm Jen and I have Myalgic Encephalomyelitis"

and they would actually know what the f@#$ that was.

Go to our Kickstarter page, check out the link and make a donation to the film.

You can also follow us on Twitter or Facebook

or even just pass along either the Kickstarter link, the Facebook Page or the Twitter handle

or preferably all of the above. Or all the above!!!

The biggest way you can help us is by

spreading the word and then scroll down

and check out some of our other video

as well as the awesome rewards by writers and

artists who are also living with M.E.

Join us on our mission to give a true face

to this disease that's so misunderstood.

Most of us look at what's around us and see

very little and yet we have the capacity to

see infinity in the smallest of things.

This is our life and everyday we're just so grateful for it.

Plus you learn from everything you survive.