September 2011 Minnesota Film and Video Grants Press Release

The Jerome Foundation Board of Directors, at its Board meeting on September 9, 2011, authorized seven grants based on the recommendations of the Minnesota Film and Video Program Review Panel.  The panel met on August 16 and 17, 2011, to review 96 applications (88 from individuals who had not been previously funded by this program and eight from previous recipients).  The panelists were filmmaker and Chair of the Cinema Division of Minneapolis Community Technical College (MCTC), Hafed Bouassida; filmmaker and Executive Director of Third World Newsreel in New York City, Dorothy Thigpin; and St. Paul filmmaker and Screenlabs/Screenwriters Workshop Co-Founder, Robb Mitchell.  Of the 96 applications reviewed, nine grants totaling $110,300 were authorized for the productions described below:

NATHAN FISHER received $10,000 for Rebuilding Cold River (working title), a feature-length documentary on the United Nations-led rebuilding of Nahr al-Bared, a Palestinian refugee camp outside of Tripoli, Lebanon. Nahr al-Bared was destroyed by war in 2007, and the entire population of 31,000 civilians fled to other refugee camps in Lebanon. No state on earth considers the 31,000 displaced Palestinians its citizens, so the displaced residents of Nahr al-Bared have very few options for resettlement.  Fortunately, the United Nations and Lebanon have agreed to rebuild Nahr al-Bared, which would be the first time in history that a destroyed Palestinian refugee camp has been rebuilt.  However, budget shortfalls have delayed the rebuilding effort, and, nearly five years later, Nahr al-Bared has yet to be rebuilt.  The documentary will follow the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) as it supervises the rebuilding of Nahr al-Bared — the first new Palestinian camp built since the 1940s — that involves the construction of apartment buildings, parks, schools, doctor’s offices, shopping centers and more.

J. ANDREW HUNT received $10,000 for Noah, a feature-length psychological thriller/sci-fi tale wrapped inside a dramatic mockumentary about a filmmaker named Jonathan Cole, who receives a mysterious hard drive in the mail labeled “Help Me” from a long lost childhood friend named William Barret.  Cole discovers hundreds of audio and video recordings on the hard drive that document a bizarre experiment involving a five-year-old boy named Noah.  Upon further inspection, he is horrified when he also uncovers evidence of his friend’s attempted suicide.  This ignites an investigation into the whereabouts of William Barret, as well as the startling truth behind the boy named Noah.

REBECCA KINGSLEY received $10,000 for The Last Colony, a documentary about America’s ambivalence toward its capital city of Washington, D.C., where the fight for democracy hits home and the battle over political self-determination intersects with historic issues of race, power, and the constitutional balancing act between federal and local government.  With the current issue of the repeal of D.C.’s gun laws framing this debate, the film explores the historical struggle for District self-government as told by its foot soldiers: leaders of the African American community who brought the issue of home rule into the folds of the civil rights movement, and thus the national arena; activists who galvanized their community to participate in local issues; government officials who were on the frontlines to pass legislation, giving Washington representative government; and journalists who have studied the complexities of the District’s local history as it relates to its status as a federal city. 

ANDREW MARTIN received $2,300 for Canoe, a 4-minute experimental film about the dark, dismal and chaotic interactions between a man who canoes down a shallow river and the people he encounters along the way (an older couple, a young boy, a woman and two men).  The film consists of only one shot that contains no on-set sound and no dialogue.  The filmmaker describes this project as the lead character's personal hell, reflecting on his darkest fears of the afterlife.  Will he be punished for living his life as an atheist by seeing his loved ones punished by dying over and over again?

KEVIN OBSATZ received $15,000 for Crazy Horse, a 15-minute narrative film about the journey of a father and son across the Great Plains to a home in foreclosure, and their attempt to navigate the aftermath of a family-rending crisis.  One of the film’s two central characters, Spencer, did really well in the 1990s working as the Creative Director of an ad agency in Minneapolis.  Now he’s unemployed, broke and divorced, but still drifting along in life through the sheer force of inertia – oblivious and in denial.  This short film will capture a specific chapter in his road trip where he reconnects with his teenage son, Jonas.  Their journey takes him back to a home that is no longer his, a beautifully restored farmhouse that his ex-wife now struggles to defend from foreclosure.  The father and son, along with the son’s friend Cameron, cross the Great Plains under the watchful gaze of the Mount Rushmore presidents, traversing the ruins of the American Empire, helped along the way by a few generous and tolerant blue-collar locals.   

JACOB SWANSON (Duluth, Minnesota) received $15,000 for A Walk Amongst The Living (working title) a 60-minute experimental narrative about the schism between the institutions we commit to and our personal desires.  According to filmmaker Swanson, work, family, marriage, friendship and religion are institutions that imprison us in our daily lives.  As an aspiring filmmaker, he struggles everyday with his commitment to these institutions.  The protagonist in this story is an unnamed woman who is weighed down by her day-to-day routines.  She is killed in a car accident and wakes in an afterlife on an abandoned road.  She is confronted with the choice of going back on the road the world of the living or travel down the road into the unknown.  Unable to make a choice, she walks into a nearby forest.  The woods act as a gateway to observing scenes played out by the people she was close to in life.  She watches her husband make love to another woman, her parents walking on a beach, her best friend smoking on the culvert where they played growing up.  After watching and at times interacting with those amongst the living, she makes the decision to walk into the unknown rather than return to her former life.     

KAO LEE THAO received $20,000 for GAO ZOUA PA, a 15-minute animated short, which the filmmaker describes as “…the first 3D animated Hmong short ever created.”  It will capture an age-old Hmong folktale that has been verbally passed down through generations of Hmong people. The film follows one if its two primary characters, Orphan Boy, as he overcomes the taboo of having no parents while trying to create a life for himself. He encounters mythical people and creatures that guide him to his true love, a young woman named Gao Zoua Pa. After he turns his back on her love, she is lost to the dragon in a lake, who holds her captive. Orphan Boy must complete 3 tasks that test his character and courage in order to win back her love.

BRENNAN VANCE received $8,000 for Like Father, a 30-minute experimental documentary about memory, inheritance and the attempt at reconciliation between the filmmaker and his estranged father, who now suffers from early-onset dementia.  The important thing is to remember this while we are still alive in order to live urgently, vibrantly, meaningfully.”  Like Father examines how the dualities of living and dying, remembering and forgetting, loving and losing manifest in possibly the most bewildering duality of all: father and son.  Through the intimate exploration of Brennan’s father’s battle with dementia, and his own potentially grave genetic relationship with it, Like Father will use a dysfunctional father-son relationship to illuminate the human side of a disease which affects so many and calls our attention to life’s most important and precious possessions: mind and memory, identity and self-awareness, life and death.

BRITNI WEST received $20,000 for an as yet untitled feature-length narrative.  This film tells the story of Etta, an overweight woman in her forties who has spent most of her life living with her friend and platonic partner Carol.  The two spend their days on the outskirts of a small town feeding pigeons from the front stoop of their apartment building and enjoying a life free from the cares of a ‘typical’ woman.  They have long ago stopped caring about beauty, and they have no family, kids, or prospect of falling in love.  As the film progresses, we come to learn about the conflicting desires of the two women.  Etta is content in their simple life, while Carol dreams of starting a new life in a new place.  The conflict comes to a head when Lydia, a twenty-four-year-old single mother, moves in next door with her six-year-old daughter Hannah.  The primary theme that will come into play throughout the film is the hold that our desires and desires of others have on our lives.

For further information about these grants, please contact Jerome Foundation Program Director, Robert Byrd at 651.224.9431 or 1.800.995.3766.  Visit the Jerome Foundation on the Web at www.jeromefdn.org.

The Jerome Foundation, created by artist and philanthropist Jerome Hill (1905-1972), seeks to contribute to a dynamic and evolving culture by supporting the creation, development, and production of new works by emerging artists.  The Foundation makes grants to not-for-profit arts organizations and artists in Minnesota and New York City.