Obrigado Productions

Obrigado Productions was born in the Amazon in 2001 during an impromptu foray into filmmaking. This led to the release of a feature-length doc "Airplane to Heaven" (2001) about a Chicago boy made good. Actually, it's about an 88 year-old Southside Irish man that's been a missionary in the jungle since 1943. This will be re-cut and updated sometime in my life.Anyway, from there we just grew, well, it's really still just me, but instead of the studio being my old childhood bedroom, I've managed to make the leap to an office on the Northside. From these confines, I've made or participated in such Award-winning comedy-short classics as "Shifty", "Alley Copz", "A Fight for Love" and "Webmaster".In 2005 I made a short doc (55 minutes) on a Southside school teacher who got really into the Illini Final Four run of 2005. It has yet to be released due to the lack of cooperation of the film's subject.Currently, I am mainly producing, directing, editing, etc...narrative feature films. Our first feature, "THE SITE" was selected to the 2007 Iowa Independent Film Fest and was also selected to IFP's "Meet the Filmmaker" series and I was honored to screen it at Facet's Cinemateque.We have recently completed a Rough Cut on our Second Feature, "LEFTY", due to hit festivals this winter. "LEFTY" is a wartime/cancer comedy about two friends who return home under very different circumstances, but find themselves in similar positions when trying to keep their personal struggles private. Grace and community thwart their efforts. Tagline: "Leaving yourself open is your best defense."We've also recently completed a 48-minute documentary on the building of the new air-traffic control tower at O'Hare ("Towering Above O'Hare"). I was granted unprecedented access to the construction site and came away with some beautiful footage and great drama as the construction team fights an accelerated schedule, the elements, tight security and strict regulations to build this unique structure. See the trailer on this site.Our next venture is a documentary about the seeds sown by "Mission Honduras". This organization has been dedicated to the education of the Honduran poor for the past 30 years. Their model, based on Catholic education, hard work and giving back to the cause has produced a generation of people who are in turn the chief operating officers of "Mission Honduras". The organization has also began exporting their cause abroad to the Dominican Republic and Liberia, Africa. It is a fascinating tale about how patience and dedication can have a rippling effect locally and around the world.