Andy DehnartOscar-winning documentary short Inocente raised more than $50,000 via Kickstarter to help finish the film, while the Oscar-winning feature-length documentary Searching for Sugar Man was inspired by a 1997 magazine article.
Craig Strydom’s article for Directions magazine told the story of his search for Sixto Rodriguez, a folk musician who disappeared from the public eye after the early 1970s. Strydom told the Baltimore Sun, “I knew that I had an incredible story on my hands when I wrote my first piece on the subject, but it took a sensitive director to turn the story into a film.” You can watch it online or on DVD; here’s its trailer:
Inocente was described on its Kickstarter page as “[t]he inspiring story of a 15-year-old homeless and undocumented girl in CA who refuses to give up her dream of being an artist,” and one of its directors, Sean Fine, told The Wall Street Journal, “We were kind of three-quarters done with the film, and we were trying to find more money to make the film, and we decided to do something with Kickstarter with our producers, and it really helped.” Here’s its trailer: