Playing in Los Angeles July 26 + 27th: "A LIFE'S WORK"

What’s it like to dedicate your life to work that won’t be completed in your lifetime? 15 years ago, filmmaker David Licata focused on four projects and the people behind them in an effort to answer this universal question.

The subjects include Jill Tarter, Director of the SETI Institute, who has been involved in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence since the 1970s; David and Jared Milarch, father and son tree farmers and co-founders of the Champion Tree Project, who clone old-growth trees to combat climate change; gospel music archivist Robert Darden, who founded the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project, an organization that is trying preserve at-risk recordings from the black gospel music tradition; and Paolo Soleri, controversial architect behind Arcosanti, a town designed to test his theories about housing an overpopulated planet.

We discover what inspired them to begin, what obstacles they face, what drives and sustains them, and how they measure success of an endeavor they will not live to see completed. But most of all we discover that their lives really aren’t that different from everyone else’s: who hasn’t gazed at the stars and wondered if we are unique, nurtured a plant, sought ideal shelter, fell in love with a song and couldn’t wait to share it with someone? And who among us will truly see our work finished before we leave this earthly plain?

About Filmmaker David Licata

David Licata is a filmmaker and writer. In addition to a A Life’s Work, he wrote and directed the short film Tango Octogenario which was broadcast on Reel New York (PBS) and screened at festivals internationally, including the prestigious New Directors/New Films showcase, the Tribeca Film Festival, and dozens of others from Yokahama to Krakow. He has written for ESPN, contributed articles and conducted interviews for Filmmaker Magazine, and film reviews for the film compendiums The Blockbuster Video Guide to Movies & Videos and Seen That, Now What?

David’s fiction and nonfiction writing has appeared in The Literary Review, Pilgrimage, Rkvry Quarterly Literary Journal, Hitotoki, and many others. Two of his short stories have been anthologized, one in the critically acclaimed Two Countries: Daughters and Sons of Immigrant Parents (Red Hen Press).