Haddonfield Filmmaker Documenting Camden Little League

Steve Patrick Ercolani is raising money to complete a documentary film on Little League baseball in one of the most dangerous cities in America.

Ercolani is canvasing his hometown of Haddonfield for a Kickstarter campaign to complete the film. He says baseball in Camden is more than just a game.

"It's life," he says in the documentary.

Ercolani, a 2006 graduate of Haddonfield Memorial High School, focused on the disparity of opportunities and quality of life in the five miles from his hometown to Camden.

"Camden has always been, from the time that I was very young, one of the most dangerous cities in America, a city with murder rates that parried those of failed states," Ercolani said in an essay on his Kickstarter pitch page. "Yet I had grown up less than five miles from this strange, third-world city with a wildly different experience. I wanted to know why. The result is this documentary, Pyne Poynt."

Ercolani is just about a third of the way to his $15,000 goal to finish the film. He has already shot three months of footage. He only has two weeks remaining to reach his goal on Kickstarter, a nonprofit group-source method for artists to fund their projects.

One twist of Kickstarter is an applicant must reach 100 percent of their goal to receive contributions. The nonprofit says about 44 percent of their projects reach goal and are funded. Ercolani is hoping to be among them.

"The documentary follows one league, one family and one city during a period of great transition," Ercolani said. "Pyne Poynt is about more than the power of sports to help children rise above poverty. It's a documentary about life and death on one small, grassless oasis in America where the chances of success aren't good but where the phrase 'hitting it out of the park' takes on a new meaning."

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