[NEWS] How This Philly Filmmaker Convinced Idris Elba to Make a Movie Here

From Philadelphia Weekly: 

That movie came out in 2010, and you launched Neighborhood Film Company in Brewerytown one year later. Why stay here?
I had a very specific mission: I wanted to train adults coming out of incarceration or homelessness. Everybody told me it wouldn’t work. But then I met Sister Mary Scullion from Project HOME and told her my idea. She was the first person who didn’t think I was losing my mind.

Wow, OK, I wasn’t expecting a nun twist.
Sister Mary told me that if I wanted to help these people, I needed to live among them and understand them. So I lived at Project HOME’s Kate’s Place for nine months, which is basically the next step from a homeless shelter. That really changed the way I saw things.

Now, at Neighborhood Film Company, we have four full-time employees plus that one apprentice each year, who gets paid full-time. The whole mission is to gain them employment in their interest or career path. The film business is all about communicating super-efficiently and putting plans in motion, pitching, working with a lot of different personalities, and doing so much so fast. You can take those skills into almost any field.