A Film To Fill Body and Soul

Dan Karslake has come to understand two types of hunger: one that resides in the stomach and one that resides in the soul.

In an attempt to sate both, Karslake is directing and producing a documentary film called "Every Three Seconds," which focuses on potential cures embodied by five different characters. A fundraising event and sneak preview took place on Saturday night at John Dirocco's elegant home in Wilton.

"The number of people that die from hunger is equivalent to a tsunami occurring every ten days," Karslake told the audience. "Hunger and extreme poverty do not have to exist anymore...we have the resources to cure them...and that is what let me know that I needed to make this film."

Working on a budget of $1.2 million, much of which has yet to be raised, the film will trace the efforts of five individuals of varying ages (three of whom have already been found) who, as Karslake put it, do not set out to try and change the world. Rather, they start taking small steps toward remedying trying situations and these steps grow into meaningful movements.

One character, for instance, is a college student at Stamford named Josh Nesbit. After traveling to Malawi, the second poorest country in the world, Nesbit decided he could make a difference in the way medical care was being provided and conducted there.

So, he gathered 100 used cell phones from his peers (that likely would have gone to waste otherwise) and brought them along on his return trip to Malawi. Nesbit then distributed the phones among medical care workers there and taught them how to text each other.

In so doing, Nesbit saved the workers obligatory 25 to 75-mile walks between villages to communicate, and increased their productivity and connectedness exponentially, saving thousands of lives. It is a plan that is now being replicated in 30 other countries around the world.

Karslake also alluded to microfinance, the process of providing small loans to help people begin or restart their daily lives. He said it will likely be a prominent aspect of the film, adding that he believes "microfinance is what will end poverty."

Around 200 guests dressed to the nines gathered at the benefit, milling about, sipping wine, and chatting in the full-sized underground gym of Dirocco's home. At first, the lavish setting seemed to starkly contrast the film's message.

After Karslake's address, he showed two snippets of the film that changed that dynamic completely.

The first clip featured a woman named Lynne Twist, who began by noting that there is enough food to feed three times the number of people on earth at the moment. Considering this fact, she admitted it seemed "outrageous" that hunger was not a thing of the past.

She continued on, however, by delineating two kinds of hunger. The first was the crippling absence of food that, in her words, drives people in need to have excessive numbers of children out of fear, thereby exacerbating food supply issues in underprivileged nations. The second was an intrinsic and mental affliction that she said is more predominant in well-developed nations; it is "the hunger for meaning, the hunger to matter" as she put it, an overwhelming desire to help remedy injustices but a crippling inability to find an avenue to do so.

Twist expanded on this second notion by pointing people who feel this spiritual hunger to take their leads from those appearing in the film and take one step at a time toward causes they believe in.  By doing so, she said they will become invested in meaningful endeavors and these efforts can be nurtured and grown into widescale difference-making.

"What you appreciate appreciates," she said, more succinctly.

At the conclusion of the preview, Karslake said he hopes to have the film ready by the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, an event he has participated in and had success at in the past.  He then turned the floor over to the evening's host, John Dirocco.

"There's no greater thing you can do than to help other people," Dirocco said. "And I know this film will be successful in doing that."

Dirocco then mentioned that an anonymous donor had volunteered $25,000 to fund Karslake's film if another five guests would contribute $5,000 each.  Within about a minute of asking if anyone was willing to accept the challenge, five attendees quickly raised their hands and volunteered the donations; $50,000 in the blink of an eye.

Within another five minutes, seven more people openly volunteered $1,000 each and this was to say nothing of the gifts enclosed privately in the envelopes laid around the room.

Karslake mentioned afterward that he was overwhelmed by the open demonstration of support and owed a huge debt of gratitude to Dirocco for opening his home and hosting the event.

"Generosity like this is what ends up making a difference," Karslake said.

For more information on the film and donations, visit the film's Web site here.