Projectile Arts' projects focus on communicating meaning and value through the arts. We serve a diverse community through documentary film, performances, exhibitions and education. We also offer video production services and for the non-profit sector to facilitate collaboration and resource pooling in the non-profit sector. We are also happy to provide fiscal sponsorship to individual artists and non-incorporated groups looking to find funding through private foundations and public trusts.

Take Me To The River is our first original feature length documentary film (now blown up to a 35mm film print), about the Maha Kumbh Mela in 2001, a Hindu festival and pilgrimage which was the largest gathering in the history of the world. The film documents the event by immersing you in the midst of the madness. Experience a roller coaster of emotions as obscurity and clarity flow across the crowded and dusty flood plain of Ganges and Yamuna Rivers. Through misty dawns, crowded streets, peaceful moments and chaotic sprints to the river, you'll journey into the Sangam, the physical and spiritual heart of the Mela where sins are cleansed, bathers can escape infinite karmic cycles and world peace is possible. You'll meet Swamis from the largest and most prestigious Hindu holy orders, ascetic naga babas, boatmen, policemen and pilgrims.

Projectile Arts grew out of its infancy while spending most of 2001 in Allahabad, India filming. Our newly renovated second floor and roof deck tent of Adi Veni Madhav Mandir quickly became a thriving live / work space for over twenty artists, both local and foreign, including a fashion designer, a painter, photographers, writers and musicians. The influence of the filmmaking process on these artists, the intense environment into which they were thrown, and their unique, independent artistic visions, created a wonderful breeding ground for collaboration that continues to infuse the work we make today.

 

A collaboration with Brooklyn artist and educator Howard Schwartzberg to create a digital video curriculum for at-risk youths in New York City. The program intends to expand and diversify the students? creative potential, by encouraging them to learn through experience and discovery, working in a contemporary creative format and addressing a number of cross-curriculum academic standards. Reality Art Class divides time between the classroom and other locations in a diverse array of environments. The students are engaged in these locations and document their experience, at once becoming creators and subjects of the work.

 

 

In Lenox, Massachusetts, between 1951 and 1960 at a place called Music Inn, a turning point in the history of music in America. Under the stewardship of Stephanie and Philip Barber Music Inn began with informal jazz and folk "Roundtables" and "Workshops" of scholars and critics, and culminated in the first School of Jazz -- where students learned from and performed with accomplished masters. Frequent participation of students and performers from nearby Tanglewood stimulated cross-fertilization between classical music and jazz. Music Inn was an undeniable force in the emergence of jazz from crowded urban clubs into concert halls. Louis Armstrong remarked in 1953, "They're doing wonderful things up there. They’re really helping make music history." Consisting of interviews, still photographs, archival footage and recordings from the time, the film will focus on the Music Inn from 1951 to 1960, when Stephanie and Philip Barber first hosted the Jazz Roundtable workshops which evolved into the first School of Jazz. As an important phenomenon in jazz history, and American cultural history in general the film will document different elements of the social, cultural and political environment as they relate to the story.
See Music Inn promo video online

 

September 12th is Interdependence Day, a movement started by in 2002 by Dr. Benjamin Barber, author of "Jihad vs. McWorld" and "Fear's Empire." Interdependence Day 2004 in Rome featured some of the worlds most innovative and forward thinking politicians, activists, intellectuals, religious leaders and artists. Projectile Arts began documenting the Interdependence Day movement in Rome and will continue to compile footage for several years, ultimately producing a feature documentary about the movement, its leaders and the issue of global interdependence from a variety of perspectives. For more information about Interdependence Day and the 2005 gathering in Paris, visit www.civworld.org.
see Interdependence Day video from Rome, 2004

 

It has been described as "the Super Bowl and World Series rolled into one". Even those Japanese who are not ardent baseball fans pay attention during Koshien. Many see it as a national treasure - an old-fashioned showcase for the purest virtues of the nation?s youth: effort, teamwork, fighting spirit, and good sportsmanship. Every young baseball player dreams of one day competing on the sacred dirt of Koshien. The history of the tournament is replete with legends of stoic young heroes overcoming tremendous adversity. Japan's most famous baseball legends, from Sadaharu Oh to Hideki Matsui and Ichiro, were first introduced to the nation on the biggest stage of them all.

 

New York City Spirit will be a documentary feature film experience of the spiritual celebration of the people of the 5 boroughs of New York City. New York City Spirit presents an unbiased honest display of multiple cultural, religious and spiritual disciplines. The film is about people and how individuals choose to connect to some higher truth and meaning everyday.

 

Coca leaves are commonly used for divination. The veins of coca leaves are pathways through the mysteries of the ancient past as well as the mysteries of our own age. It is said that the virgin Mary chewed on the coca as she lamented the loss of her son leaving her teeth marks on the back of the Coca has always been a dynamic force within Andean society – more recently it is dynamic in that society’s relation to the world. Alternately a unifier and a polarizer, a scourge or a boon, coca has fallen in and out of the favor of kings, popes, and presidents. To emphasize the strange continuities and contradictions that come into play, the film will move both backwards and forwards in time, beginning in the present and the primordial past, and move towards a convergence which will expose the tension that is still winding, and that the indigenous believe cannot resolve until they have wrested total control of the state.

 

As a TMTTR spin off project in the works for 2007, bringing several digital cameras and printers to India, Projectile Arts will empower the ascetics of Juna Akhara to document for themselves their own experiences at (the largest gatherings in the world) the Maha Kumbh Mela in Nasik and the Ardh Kumbh Mela in Allahabad. While touring the film TMTTR at the 2004 Maha Kumbh in Ujjain, Nicole Jaquis and Saugat Datta witnessed how, with few possessions in their small baba bags, photo albums are one of the things these Hindu ascetics hold dear. Three days into their stay at the festival and one slightly ridiculous rumor later, this Community Outreach Project spontaneously began with a select group of Sadhus learning to use their camera equipment.

 
Each year we dazzle our audience with the best of that year’s productions. From film trailers to fashion shows, live music to live auctions, sunset dinners to late-night DJs, this is the event you never want to miss.

 
A new department led by multi-cultural performance artist Akim Funk Buddha, explores the urban environment as a confluence for different traditions of creative expression and performance. True mixing and intermingling of cultures happens only in urban centers. The department of Urban Affairs produces events that examine this phenomenon in different ways through live performance, music and film.

 

A poetry and performance series derived from a recognition that fierce examination (“slamming”) is worthy of veneration and respect (sacred). Designed to “slam” concepts and invite direct experience, Sacred Slam offers poetic performances by spiritual teachers and practitioners from the world’s wisdom traditions.

 

Project inspired wearables. Original designs created by BABATUNDE in collaboration with our diverse and talented network of artists, coming soon in our online store.