Here’s a challenge for you:
What stories are waiting to be told in your city, your culture, or your community?Well, for me, it’s been about writing a story set in my hometown of Bristol, UK.
Bristol is often voted as the top place to live in the country. It has a vibrant arts scene, including a great independent cinema, great facilities and recreational areas. It likes to flaunt its green credentials, considers itself at the cutting edge of things, and yet…
it is a distribution hub for human trafficking.
Go figure, eh? And why does this persist? I believe it’s due to our complicity and complacency.
It is out of this context, that Seeing Rachel was born; a film about human trafficking, set within this most beautiful of cities and yet with this dark underbelly of organised crime.
How about you? What secrets does your city hold? What are you responding to in your work that is confronting such corrosive issues?
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Bristol sounds great, Geoff Hall! I'll like to write a script that's set there one day. I don't know what secrets my city holds, but I'm interested in finding out.
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Maurice Vaughan go for it, Maurice! I was talking to a charity worker one time and they said that with Bristol’s involvement in the historical Trans-Atlantic SlaveTrade and now it’s participation in the Modern Day Slave Trade, that it seems that some cities don’t learn from their previous social sins.
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I appreciate what you're doing, Geoff. I live in Arizona, and for me, it's the fear of waking up one day and finding out my dad was deported. I recently saw a news story about a pregnant mom getting detained, and her four young kids suddenly having to take care of their sick dad alone. That image doesn’t leave me.
Millions of stories like that are what pushed me to write Why My Parents Crossed the Border. It’s not about the headlines—it’s about what happens after. The quiet grief and strength that doesn’t make the news.
Your project sounds powerful, and I love how you're digging into the truth hiding behind a beautiful place. That contrast hits hard.
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I imagine for me it would be the dream of Iran being on par with, or even surpassing, the west in terms of prosperity like Reza Shah hoped before the Islamic takeover. It's not a story I personally feel compelled to write (not yet, anyway), but I imagine someone out there will know exactly what that society would look like.
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Banafsheh Esmailzadeh hi there, Banafsheh. Be careful, stories have a way of creeping up on you! You may find that now you have mentioned it, the Universe has heard you and will start talking to you about it.
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Geoff Hall, I do not know any specific stories where I now live in Germany. However, I do know there are problems and injustice in the world. I received enough death threats to have figured that one out. So, I write songs which point out hypocrisy, hatred and intolerance. I wrote a song just yesterda titled On Day One about inequity and hypocrisy. I posted it on Bandcamp. I will keep on writing such songs as long as needed.
https://wymanbrent.bandcamp.com/track/on-day-one
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This is certainly another good one Geoff Hall ! Reminds me of things back home!
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Carlos Joel Arellano Hi Carlos, I appreciate your support. Thank you. I watched a Netflix documentary a while back called Immigration Nation and was astounded and shocked by ICE’s inhumane practices.
Let’s keep in touch.
https://youtu.be/X_xVKy58Yuw?si=XytHy_HVdJPMz0ZN
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Very true Geoff Hall! I personally still like writing purely from imagination rather than reflecting the world around us (even in an idealised state), but you never know haha that writer could be me one day :D