American Caravan

Last year Visionaire Media created and produced On the Road in America, a 13 part series about 4 young Arabs traveling across America with an American film crew in association with Layalina Productions, a Washington based public diplomacy initiative. With between four and five million viewers per episode, the series was the second highest rated show in the Middle East during the three-month period that it was broadcast on MBC1. During Ramadan of this year, the series was broadcast in the Region for the fourth time. The series has been sold to the Sundance Channel in the US, and the Museum of Television and Radio will be doing two special events on the series (one at each of their branches in Los Angeles and New York) around its US airdate in early 2008. As the attached press states, the show has been a triumph of Public Diplomacy.

In 2008, in association with Layalina Productions, Visionaire will film American Caravan, a thirteen half hour series about six twenty something young American men and women traveling by sea and land across the Middle East with an Arab and American crew who will also be characters in the drama. Whereas the cast in On the Road in America ranged from ages 18 to 34 and the content was targeted at a general, somewhat conservative Middle Eastern audience, American Caravan will be skewed to American twenty-something kids and their interests. They will be a diverse group: performing artists, Democrats, Republicans, an evangelical Christian, an American Muslim, etc. Final casting will be in concert with Layalina and our financial partners.

The climactic event of the series will be the Arts festival at Baalbeck at which most of the cast members will perform. However, as with most of these ‘upscale’ reality series that don’t resort to narrative contrivances, the journey is the destination. They all come with baggage and expectations and the drama is in the interface between themselves and other cast members, the crew and the people and cultures with whom they interact.

We will start in Moorish Spain and travel largely by boat (Turkish Gulet/Ketch) across North Africa with frequent sojourns inland. From Egypt, we will journey to the Red Sea and then overland through Jordan, Lebanon and the Gulf. However, the final itinerary and casting will be in concert with Layalina and our financial partners.

The series was created by Academy Award nominated Jerome Gary (Pumping Iron, Stripper, The Russians, Laughs), and he is Executive Producing with Leon Shahabian of Layalina Productions. Segment directors are Jerome Gary, Mary Lambert, Shawn Thompson, and Latham Gaines (see resumes in Personnel).

For additional information and updates, contact us directly.