Focus Forward Competition Update

Our short documentary VIRTUAL IRAQ REDUX is a Semifinalist in the $200,000 FOCUS FORWARD Filmmaker Competition and is in the running to become the $100,000 Grand Prize Winner. It could also be named an Audience Favorite if it's among the ten that receives the most votes. If you love it, vote for it. Click on the VOTE button in the top right corner of the video player. Note that voting may not be available on all mobile platforms, and browser cookies must be enabled to vote. Voting begins on Wednesday November 14th, at 12PM EST.

Of the 2.3 million U.S. military personnel who have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001, studies estimate that as many as 460,000 suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder on returning home. The innovative virtual reality clinical therapy for PTSD developed by Dr. Skip Rizzo at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies leverages computer and gaming technologies in novel ways to increase accessibility and acceptability, as well as extend the overall effectiveness of treatment beyond current conventional exposure therapy with highly promising results.

My Brother's Story

Over the summer I completed a rewrite on "My Brother's Story," a screenplay that I have been collaborating on with Hollywood choreographer Paul Becker over the years. We started writing the script when we were neighbors in Crown Heights in Brooklyn back in 2007. By chance I met Paul at our local garden, which was run by mutual friend "Puerto Rican Joey," a Vietnam vet and the neighborhood MacGyver. Turned out Paul lived a block from me on Dean Street, and the rest is history. Below is the log line for "My Brother's Story." After their father's arrest, Aaron and Albee Swift duck Child Protective Services and go to live with dance teacher Miles Bryant and his estranged brother Greg above an abandoned theater in Brooklyn. Aaron, a talented dancer, and Albee, a talented grifter, combine their skills to save the theater by resurrecting the careers of the famous Bryant brothers, two retired Broadway showmen. But when a column in the New York Times generates a lot of publicity, Child Protective Services hunt down Aaron and Albee, threatening the future of two families and a historic landmark.