Mona Christmas and a Happy Louvre Year

Justine and I would first like to wish you all a joyous holiday season and then bring you up to date on the progress of our film.

As you know, 2011 is a handful of days away and that marks the beginning of the 100th anniversary of Vincenzo Peruggia's unthinkable theft of the Mona Lisa.  Right now, I'm working furiously to get a rough cut finished by January 7 so we can enter the first of many film festivals.

2010 brought some terrific developments.

We were the happy recipients of a $26,000 grant from the Daniel B. and Florence E. Green Family Foundation.  This money will go a long way to helping us pay for the rights for archival photos and video. Many thanks to the Greens.

In May of this year, I had the good fortune to be flown to Paris by Kensington Productions to appear in an episode of their new television series Museum Secrets. They were doing a segment on the theft of the Mona Lisa and I was their official "talking head."  I got to retrace some of Peruggia's steps as I carried a life-sized copy of the painting outside the Louvre and onto a bus where I made my escape.

Here is the link to two trailers from that show.  (In the first, we're about 22-seconds in , the 2nd about 44-seconds in)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTEbppaKh7c&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_W23xYAHJkw

The series premieres in Canada on January 7 and hopefully will be here in the US later next year.   http://www.museumsecrets.tv/

While you're checking things out, visit our blog:  www.monalisadocumentary.blogspot.com  It has lots of interesting tidbits on the  history of the theft as well as clips from our film.

And if you're on Facebook, please become fans on our Fan Page (if you haven't already)  http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/The-Missing-Piece/106683748756

And one last shameless plug, check our our website  www.monalisamissing.com  We have a Store page on that site and if you buy any books on Amazon through that page, a portion of the proceeds will go toward funding our film. (I guess I should have let everyone know that a lot more than 3 days before Christmas but keep it in mind for the future.)

Thanks again for your help, support and interest in our project.  August 21, 2011 is now just 8 months away!


Joe and Justine Medeiros

I know what the numbers and letters in Mona Lisa's eyes say...

They say "2 hours, 9 minutes" which is how long the rough cut is of my doc on Vincenzo Peruggia, the man who stole the Mona Lisa from the Louvre.

It's a fitting day to finish the rough cut since 99 years ago on Dec. 13, newspapers around the world ran the story that the painting had been recovered in Florence and Peruggia had been arrested.

Check out some of the footage from the film on our Facebook fan page
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=484410742261

DEADLINE DECEMBER 17

We decided to enter our first film festival and the deadline is December 17!  There's a lot of work ahead for me to get a showable cut.


Trying to get Act 1 in shape today. In that part of the film, I tell the story of the theft, how I got interested in it and how this led me to Peruggia's daughter Celestina. Originally I had tried to write Peruggia's story as a fictional film but never finished it because I was just making stuff up instead of writing what really happened -- because I didn't know what had really happened.  No one did.  Here's clip from the rough cut telling about the 3 different versions of the story I tried.

MUSEUM SECRETS DEBUTS JANUARY 6

In May, Kensington Productions flew me to Toronto to be their on-camera expert in a segment on the theft of the Mona Lisa in their new series Museum Secrets. It will air on History Television in Canada, January 6.  Here are some production stills and a link to the show's trailer.

Photos by www.museumsecrets.tv

Link to the trailer....

http://blog.museumsecrets.tv/2010/12/inside-the-louvre-trailer/