Norah Shapiro(I)

Camera and Electrical Department
Director
Producer

Can art make a difference in the lives of kids struggling with tough realities? How far can mentors go to reach them, with scarce resources and little control over the world outside the confines of the theater?

'If You Dare' follows a group of children and the adult artists who mentor them, exploring the struggles and triumphs in a small theater company's efforts to use theater to make a difference in the lives of children facing challenges of inner city life.

The children of the Chicago Avenue Project experience the artistically rich world of Â“theaterÂ” and the support of professional theater artists who shower them with unconditional love, creativity, and one-on-one artistic mentoring. At the same time, the mentors experience the exhilaration of impacting the childrenÂ’s lives, the dismay of failing to do so, and the buttons these experiences push in their own efforts to exist as artists.

Through the process of producing the childrenÂ’s plays, real life dramas in the lives of the children and the adults are revealed, and questions of the limitations and possibilities of art as a means to transcend the challenges of daily life are probed. 'If You Dare' tracks their journeys, from inner-city Minneapolis to the White House, from the heart of the largest Somali immigrant community in the US with struggles over issues of assimilation, and ultimately from the children's lives on their inner city streets to the world inside the theater.

Play trailer2:30

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Norah Shapiro is an award winning Minneapolis-based filmmaker who left a decade-long career as a public defender to pursue documentary filmmaking, and hasn't looked back since. Her first feature film Miss Tibet: Beauty in Exile (2014) premiered at the 2014 DOC NYC Film Festival. Additional screenings include the 2015 Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival where it received the "Best Minnesota Made Feature Documentary" award; SF DOCFEST; the Asian American International Film Festival in New York City; and others around the globe. Norah recently co-directed Minnesota 13: From Grain to Glass, about the untold story of Moonshine in Minnesota. She is also producing a new documentary about the recently solved 27-year old abduction of Jacob Wetterling, a young Minnesota boy in rural Minnesota and its far reaching impact; and Killing Mookie, about the handling of a police killing of a young african american man by the Minneapolis Police Department and the media. Ms. Shapiro received the McKnight Filmmaking Fellowship in 2012 and has received numerous production and completion funding awards from funders including the Jerome Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board, and the Minnesota Filmmakers Legacy Fund. Her freelance work has been recently featured on Fusion.net. Norah's newest project, Time for Ilhan now in the editing phase, has received funding awards from the Jerome Foundation, and the Catapult Film Fund, with anticipated completion by early 2018.