Be Part Of New Film About The Peace Corps

Allen Mondell (Sierra Leone 1963-65) for the last 40 years has been a documentary filmmaker working in both commercial and public television although for the past 30 years, with his wife Cynthia, they have worked as independent filmmakers producing and distributing documentary and educational films (www.mediaprojects.org). He is now working on a documentary about the Peace Corps experience, telling the story of PCVs through letters, diaries and journals written while overseas.

“What I want,” he wrote me, “is writing that is  honest, personal, revealing and surprising. I also want it to be about people who went crazy from the boredom, about people caught up in revolutions, about people who got angry and lashed out, about harsh disappointments, about people who almost died of dysentery, about people who did die because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, about people trying desperately to cope with the day-to-day problems of living in a foreign culture.”

With those stories, he’ll also need photographs, drawings, and any footage shot on both film and videotape. You can contact him at allen@mediaprojects.org.

I told Allen that I would help him get this film done in time for the 50^th anniversary. He is now raising funds for the Peace Corps documentary through his non-profit company. If  you would like to help with funding, go to Allen Mondell on Facebook. At the top of Allen’s page, click on the “CAUSES” tab, which links you to his “Peace Corps Documentary Project. On the Peace Corps page, click on the “DONATE” button to make a tax-deductible contribution to the project. 

We hope that this is the story in film of our Peace Corps experience, and it is a film you can help make happen.