An evening with an multi-award winning film and its director: AN AMERICAN OPERA is a visceral, operatic vision of what happened to the pet owners of New Orleans who were forced to evacuate after Hurricane Katrina without their beloved pets and the volunteers who came from all over the world to help. America suffered its worst domestic animal crisis in history when tens of thousands of animals were left to perish in neighborhoods all across the gulf. Follow the heartfelt story, magically crafted by Director Tom McPhee, of the pets, vets, owners, officials, rescuers, and adopters of animals as they work through the chaos to do what is right, only to discover not everyone is working toward the same goal. It's an exploration as much about human nature, looking at Katrina thru a unique perspective.
An innovator in film, event, multimedia, technology, and television industries for 15 years, Tom McPhee got his start after he sold his multi-million dollar software business MultiDynamics. His first foray into filmmaking was as producer of Bruce Campbell Presents Hatred of a Minute, a film he toured live with to 70 venues. Seeing a need for a new distribution model, he started FLIXtour, a traveling film festival showing truly independent films with their directors to universities all across the nation on a tour that included over 220 campus events in 3 years.
He has also served as Executive Director of the Detroit and Windsor International Festival of Film, creator/producer of TV's Real Detroit Weekly: The Music Show. The Music Show showcased local artists in Detroit with performances, music videos, and interviews, broadcast to over 4 million viewers. Tom McPhee is now self-distributing his multi-award winning documentary An American Opera: The Greatest Pet Rescue Ever! and concurrently shooting My Senior Year, a film based on 10,000 interviews of people over the age of sixty.
