Once, maybe twice in a lifetime, you get an idea - a good idea - before anyone else. For a journalist, this can be a make-or-break moment. Act on it, and you find yourself surfing the crest of current events. It might even, as I discovered - be your BIG BREAK INTO THE MOVIES.

So there we were, my husband and I, on a Sunday morning, browsing through the San Francisco Chronicle - when a small article caught our attention. An American sportswriter covering the Pan American games had discovered a functioning Jewish synagogue in the heart of Havana.

Instantly, my husband - a family therapist hatching a second career as a videographer - and I, a journalist with some film making experience and knowledge of Latin America - envisioned the Documentary That Had Never Been Done: The Jews in Cuba.

Imagine the possibilities! Old World Jewish socialists meet New World Latin Communists. Pale emigrants from the shtetl discover sunshine and mambo. Get the pitch? Havana Nagila! In an instant, our lives were changed.

The Challenge Before soaring too close to the sun on the wings of our idea, however, I did a library search to make sure that it was, as I suspected, uniquely "ours." The year was 1992; I was new to the Internet and was mainly interested in it as a research tool. Searching several of the main university libraries, I cross-referenced "Cuba" and "Jews" and found that there was virtually nothing written nor filmed on the subject.

The entire Stanford Library, including the Hoover Institute, turned up two articles, one of them written in 1945. Their contents, however, convinced me there was a fascinating piece of history here. Why had no one covered it before? That question would be embedded in the story of the forgotten Cuban Jews.

We believed in our idea; likewise our ability to do it. The subject was peculiarly suited to our backgrounds: both of us Jewish, Spanish-speaking, and longtime lovers of Cuban music. The challenges, however, were formidable. Not only was information on our subject nonexistent in standard sources, it was a location to which U.S. mail was not delivered and U.S. phone lines did not extend. Thanks to our government, it is illegal for U.S. citizens to travel to Cuba without a special visa.

As first-time filmmakers, we were also unfunded: The film crew? My husband and I: unpaid, of course. There was only one way we were going to be able to make this film: with the Internet as a partner, and a lot of chutzpah.

Pre-production: Research, communications & what I didnšt know
Pre-production research took us a whole year. It would have been much faster if I knew about the Web what I know today: that even newsletters from small institutions and ethnic newspapers, can sometimes be accessed, even if they are not cataloged by major libraries. Fuzzy gray Xeroxes of these articles came trickling into my house by regular mail, because of the personal contacts I made on the Net.

One of the great attributes of the Net is the way it allows you to reach groups of people with the same interests - no matter how rare or obscure. You think you're alone in your obsession - then you find out you're "mainstream" somewhere on the Web.

Once we put the word out about our work-in-progress on a limited number of Cuba and Jewish/activist Internet (we used Peace Net) conferences, Jewish Cubaphiles, Cuban Jews and other sources came crawling out of the woodwork. Everyone had a story to tell, a contact to offer.

By the time we got our journalists' visas and flew from California to Cuba, I had 60 well-informed questions and a list of 15 key people - real, living Cubans - to interview; plus their phone numbers and addresses. The fact that they didn't know we were coming was besides the point.

Post Production: How we overcame the "I-need-more-footage" blues
When we returned from Cuba with our interviews and footage, we faced another kind of problem: our film editor had a voracious appetite for additional footage. The thing was: even if it were affordable, no way could we return to Cuba for the usual "pick-up" shots.

As my documentary script evolved from the weaving together of the interviews, new and eclectic visual needs revealed themselves. We decided to use still photographs where possible. Our new Internet connections were also invaluable here: families we scarcely knew from as far away as Florida and the Carolinas sent us envelopes full of precious, evocative family photos from their years in Cuba.

But every editing session produced a new list of images we needed: often historical, and ever more particular. Commercial stock photo banks didn't have what we needed, and if they did they would have completely blown our budget. Once again we put out a call for help on the Web, listing exactly what we needed and their purpose in our film.

Many photographers and travelers responded. But there were one or two shots we still couldn't get. Then one day, the most astounding email in our box: from a fellow Californian who happened to be surfing the Net while visiting Cuba! A writer and photographer, he was in touch with an amateur photographers club in Havana.

"Just tell me what you want," he wrote, "and we'll get a shot of it. I'll be back in Sacramento next week." He arrived on schedule and delivered us the roll of film, somewhat burned by the Havana heat, but altogether usable. Saved!

The realization that Cuba was online opened up vast new possibilities: you couldn't call Cuba, you couldn't write and expect your letter to arrive - but you could email! In actuality, academics were among the first Cuban citizens to bridge the communications gap resulting from the U.S. embargo.

Over the time in which our film was completed, citizen access to the Internet expanded immensely across the island - with all sorts of political implications, of course. Pre-production research for a film in Cuba would be an entirely different story today.

Post-Production & Marketing: "Dear Sister...."
With a budget as small as ours, you'd expect our documentary to have the look of a home movie. Not quite. What we saved in research, travel and other costs allowed us to put our resources where it really counts: into editing, sound and visual effects.

As soon as it was released, Havana Nagila grabbed an important video prize and was picked up for a premiere at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. From there, invitations to "sister" Jewish Film Festivals around the world was virtually assured.

So now we had joined the ranks of independent film makers. Other filmmakers we knew told us that if we ever wanted to earn our investment back, we'd have to distribute it ourselves. I'd like to tell you that we hired a sales manager, but once again . . . it was just my husband, the Internet, and me.

Where to start? My husband (the producer) put out a little announcement on a few Internet news conferences where we'd expect our potential audiences to check in: again, we used Peace Net. Because Havana Nagila tells a cross-cultural story that can be cross-referenced so many different ways: Jewish, Cuban, Latin American, anthropology, immigration, history, politics, music, and just plain human interest, the Internet was a perfect vehicle to target people who would want to know about it, but who were widely divergent in their interests.

It was not an advertisement. Not a Web Page. Nothing fancy. Just the news that our film had been released. But the kind of people who would be interested in our film - a non-commercial labor of love from beginning to end - were also the kind of people who would trust that kind of message. The deluge of interest proved it: our audience was out there.

When our film was booked on PBS stations in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, or was to be shown at a festival, we put similar announcements online, announcing show times and locations. The result? Full house, every time.

Our favorite response was to the announcement of our New York premiere. "My Dear Sister," the email from Brazil began. "So sorry we can't make it to your show..."