Eric Tang, R.I.P.

I write this with much sadness.

Eric Tang, one of my best friends, one of the original Semester at Sea voyagers that founded FORGE, the man responsible for initiating the Meheba Friendly library featured in both "Zambian Forge" and "Life in Limbo", has passed away, much too soon.

He was traveling in Mexico when it happened, following his dream of spending time south of the border, learning Spanish, meeting new people and seeing new places. He was exploring a waterfall at the time of his death. Details are currently scarce and may never be clear, but a fall into water caused him to drown.

The best thing I can say about what has happened is that I know Eric died living exactly the life he dreamt of leading. Travel, exploration, and pushing his limits to the edge were cornerstones of his personality. Though his life was much too short, he spent his time well. You can read his travel blog here if you like:
http://allpeoplebehappy.blogspot.com/

Eric will be missed, not only by all of the people whose lives he touched, but also by the people he desired to help and now will not be able to.

We loved you Eric, and we will miss you.

David Mallin

Life in Limbo - African Refugee Stories

It's been a long while since I've updated this blog. It's not because nothing has been happening. Actually, quite a bit has been going on. I've just been too busy with other things to blog. However, the main thing eating up my time, the AFI Conservatory, is on break for the next month, so I am using the time to catch up on stuff. Like this blog. So, here is some news..

When we passed around the cut we had of Zambian Forge, we received some pretty specific feedback that we should be looking for TV distribution, and that the slots were limited on TV for feature length projects. So, we started the process of trimming down to conform the show to a TV hour (which comes in at about 52 minutes in this case).

In December, we found an executive producer, named Chris Haws. His resume is extensive, including several years as a Senior VP and Executive Producer for Discovery. He has produced hundreds of hours of programming for Discovery, PBS, and additional networks.

From January to March, Zambian Forge was reshaped. In addition to cutting 30 minutes from the original, we introduced narration. At this point we decided to change the name so that there would be no confusion between the products. So, I now would like to introduce: "Life in Limbo - African Refugee Stories" a 1 hour documentary special.

In April and May, Life in Limbo came back to me for some fine tuning. New lower-thirds were created in Motion, a pass of color correction was done, and preview DVDs were created. We are now actively looking for television distribution for this new cut.

To this end, I am currently in Washington DC attending AFI Silverdocs, a much more appropriate environment for this type of film than our trip to Cannes a year ago.

I look forward to sharing Life in Limbo - African Refugee Stories with all of you.

David