40-year Retrospective of SOHO

A 40-year Retrospective of SOHO is in production and will be premiered as a full feature documentary film event later in the year. A preview was shown at the PIP awards to rave reviews. All members will receive a DVD.

Our filmmaker is SOHO board member Dan Soderberg. Dan is an UCLA-trained filmmaker and photographer, a native of San Diego County and a 4th generation Californian with a family link to Captain Henry Delano Fitch, San Diego's first storekeeper.

As a teenager he was a devotee of Frank Lloyd Wright and entered SOHO through his interest in our Modernism Committee. However, his first preservation activism came much earlier in 1978 at the age of 22 when he attended the Balboa Park protest against the demolition of the historic Klauber House.

Dan says, "There are probably not as many stories as big to tell in San Diego as SOHO's. That's because each and every SOHO campaign has its own story and there are so many. Furthermore, SOHO isn't just one thing, but a vast collection of diverse people, strong personalities, each with their own distinct colorful stories. How to distill all of that to one thread is a challenge and a half."

The production is operating on a shoestring budget but with a high quality of talent. Dan is handling all aspects of the film, including research, camera work, editing, and post-production.

Dan is also on the Events and Education Committee and between all of us we have quite a list of ways and ideas that SOHO can continue to make videos a powerful part of our advocacy and education, and to provide video content for our web sites. We also see it as a future fundraising tool to promote the Whaley House museum and our other sites.

If anyone would like to donate to a fund to help us purchase a professional 3 chip flash memory high definition camcorder, I can assure you it would be a donation well spent. We need to raise approximately $6,000 for this effort.