Support Asian American filmmakers by donating through Kickstarter.com website

I've known about Kickstarter.com, the fundraising site for creative startups and projects in a variety of categories including film, art, dance, technology, design, journalism, comedy and others, but I'd never really looked into it. This week, though, I've come across several very cool films by Asian Americans that are using Kickstarter to ask for donations. Here's how it works:

Kickstarter is a new way to fund creative ideas and ambitious endeavors. We believe that... • A good idea, communicated well, can spread fast and wide. • A large group of people can be a tremendous source of money and encouragement. Kickstarter is powered by a unique all-or-nothing funding method where projects must be fully-funded or no money changes hands.

Each project must set an amount needed and a deadline by which that amount must be raised. If you don't get enough donations to reach the amount, you get none of the money that's already been pledged. Each project offers different levels of thank-you gifts and rewards for donors, and donors can pledge as little as one dollar. The submissions include a video pitch asking for donations, as well as written descriptions for the project. It's a great way to generate crowd-sourced funding. The three films I wrote about on my Posterous blog this week are all short films by Asian American filmmakers, and they're all interesting ideas that I think are worth supporting. Here's a little information about them, starting with the video at the top of this post, for "The Potential Wives of Norman Mao."