IN OFFICIAL SELECTION “FINDING HOME” WRITTEN BY TAI COLLINS - SHORTLISTED FOR THE AFA

BIO:

Tai Collins is an American screenwriter who lives part time in Malibu, California and part time in Cape Town, South Africa. She studied screenwriting at the University of California, Los Angeles and has been a writer for television for over twenty years, writing for a number of one-hour dramatic series, including; The Pretender, Poltergeist: NYPD Blue, and numerous seasons on the popular series, Baywatch. Tai prides herself on her ability to create heroic but flawed characters, who face life and death situations every day but go home to the same problems that we all embrace.

Tai is also the founder and Executive Director of A Chance for Children Foundation, which for the past 20 years has provided programs for the most "at-risk" inner city and homeless youth in LA’s four toughest gang neighborhoods and this past year founded A Chance for Children South Africa. She has received numerous honor for her charitable work which include: “The Humanitarian Award” alongside Kofi Annan, the W.O.M.E.N. of Los Angeles Mentoring Award, the "Charity of the Year" by The Today Show, The United Nations Women in the World Making Change Award, and the California Peace Officers Association Certificate of Appreciation, presented to an individual outside of the law enforcement for an action that enhances peace. For Women's History Month, the California State Assembly inducted her as a "Women of History."

Tai believes that through her writing she can engender compassion by telling stories that authentically convey the human spirit. She is currently the Executive Producer and Creator of the television series SAF3, staring Dolph Lundgren.

Finding Home
Written by Tai Collins

Log Line:

Set in the south in the 1970’s, a young white girl, desperate to escape her father’s abuse, finds friendship, unconditional love, and acceptance from an aging black man, whom society has persecuted for the color of his skin. Years later when she returns home to care for her dying father, she realizes that the relationship she yearned for her whole life with him, she had in that special childhood friendship.

Synopsis:

Set in the south in 1976, Finding Home is a heartwarming story about an unlikely friendship between Lacie, an eight-year-old girl trying to escape her lonely and troubled home life and her next-door neighbor, Clinch, an aging black man whom society has persecuted for the color of his skin. Taught by her father that blacks are to be hated, she is forced to keep their relationship a secret and has to sneak to see him. Lacie isn’t “safe at home” and Clinch isn’t “safe in the world”. Together they learn that the transforming power of love has no barriers and that home is the place you feel most safe.

When she learns that Clinch never got to go to school or learn to read because he was black, she has a hard time understanding why. When she shares that she isn’t allowed to play baseball because Little League doesn’t allow girls, she discovers Clinch had the same dream but wasn’t able to play because of the color of his skin. He goes on to teach her about the mesmerizing world of gardening and the parallel it has to baseball. They are both done under the open blue sky and around green grass and both are a lot more fun when your hands and knees are in the dirt.

Decades later, Lacie is faced with her father’s fading health and she returns home to care for him. When she sees Clinch’s home being torn down, memories flood in, taking her back to the days of that special friendship and the realization that Clinch was not only her childhood friend, but a fierce hearted “stand in father” that she longed for and thought she never had.