November 2011 New York City Film and Video Grants Press Release

The Jerome Foundation Board of Directors, at its Board meeting on November 21, 2011, authorized eight grants based on the recommendations of the New York City Film and Video Program Review Panel.  The Panel met on October 20 and 21, 2011, at Anthology Film Archives to review 51 applications (44 from individuals who had not previously been funded by the program, and seven from previous recipients).  The panelists were producer Lisa Cortes; Managing Director of the Tribeca Film Institute, Eileen Newman; and Rajendra (Raj) Roy, The Celeste Bartos Chief Curator of Film at the Museum of Modern Art.  Of the 51 applications reviewed, eight grants totaling $105,000 were authorized for the productions described below: 

ENRICO CULLEN received a grant for SALT IN THE AIR, a feature-length documentary that tells the stories of salt miners, mine engineers, doctors, patients and residents of Solotvyno, a small Ukrainian village located deep in the Carpathian Mountains on the border with Romania.  A huge salt mine with purportedly the purest salt on Earth exists beneath the town, but also looms large in the town’s future.  The salt is so pure that inhaling it can virtually cure asthma in children.  It’s also a highly valuable resource for this poor community.  Today, the salt mine is collapsing, the miners have held protests, and the mine director was recently fired.  Members of the Ukrainian presidential cabinet have held high level talks about what to do with the mine.  In short, the coming months and years will spell out Solotvyno’s future.  Does the phrase, “No salt mine was ever abandoned…” by Ferdinand Braudel (Civilization and Capital, 1979) carry within it the struggles of the past and a prediction for the future; namely, that the Solotvyno Salt Mine will be sustained?  In a sense, Solotvyno serves as a metaphor for the broader relationship of human beings to Earth.  Can we transform the way we live so that our darker, exploitative impulses serve a higher purpose?  This film will examine that question and more.

Previous recipient JASON DaSILVA was awarded support for When I Walk, a feature-length documentary that chronicles DaSilva’s rapid loss of mobility over a five-year period, his emotional journey along the way, and his pursuit of a new identity.  Five years ago, after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS), DaSilva discovered there were few stories or personal accounts documenting the physical and emotional experience of dealing with the disease.  While there is an array of resources written from a medical perspective, there are no documentary narratives exploring the unusual and surreal experience of watching your body rapidly deteriorate.  Given that MS is the most common neurological disease, DaSilva found this surprising.  He wanted to understand the journey of those who had gone before him, yet there were few accounts.  His doctors were telling him that in five years he would be in a wheelchair, possibly without eyesight, and perhaps also losing the ability to use his hands.  At the time, he did not believe the doctors.  Yet at the same time, being a filmmaker, he decided to turn the camera on himself and begin recording.  Now after five years, some of what was foretold has come true.  He is now in a wheelchair and has lost all mobility in his legs.  Fortunately, however, he has captured the experience through this documentary film, which he wishes to share with others.  

A grant was awarded to previous recipient MAI ISKANDER for an as yet untitled feature-length documentary.  As the call for social justice in Cairo, Egypt snowballs into an all out demand for regime change, 22-year-old Heba, a greenhorn journalist and democratic activist, is at the heart of the events shaping the country’s future.  However, her idealism is put to the test as Egypt faces the challenges of putting democracy into practice.  What does a true democracy actually look like?  Is it possible in countries where the people have been repressed for so long, and where the wealth – and the power – are concentrated in the hands of a few?  There are, of course, no clear models in the Arab Middle East, so what might an Egyptian democracy look like?  These are the questions Heba is determined to explore.  Charming, fashionable, and full of energy, she approaches her work with much passion – all the more so in light of recent events in her country.  

ADAM KELEMAN received support for Long Days, an experimental narrative short.  In a small Northeastern Pennsylvania town, Carol, a 30-something, blonde-haired woman wearing a beige sweater and light brown pants, steadily walks down a quiet street carrying a bag of groceries.  It’s dusk.  She opens her car door, sets the grocery bag down on the back seat, and grabs a newspaper out of the bag.  After circling a couple of ads in the classified section, she throws the newspaper in the backseat and turns on the car.  Driving along the suburban streets towards her motel, country music plays as the sun sets in the distance.  Thus begins Long Days, a “slice-of-life” film about an average-seeming woman, a drifter, who attempts to establish normalcy in a post-industrial American town.  But Carol is not your average person.  She isn’t even human, really.  Yet in the quest to establish normalcy, Long Days suggests she is a gentle soul trapped inside a horrific circumstance and attempts to humanize the monster we’re all capable of becoming.

JOSH KOURY & MYLES KANE were awarded a grant for The Making of Planet X (working title), a feature-length documentary that follows the making of an amateur sci-fi film called Planet X, which begins hundreds of years into the future.  An ill-fated spacecraft falls victim to corporate espionage, leaving it stranded in the far reaches of the outer solar system.  Alien combatants surround the crew of research scientists and move in.  This is the setup for Eric Swain and Troy Bernier’s newest film, Planet X.  Their attempt to bring this epic fantasy to life is wildly inventive and utterly bizarre.  They are truly fascinated by the transcendent nature of movie-making itself, where their dreams of being space travelers, charming leading men, and even successful filmmakers, are all quite possible.  Eric and Troy embody a specific balance of naivety, grand intention, and shortcomings, which allow them to transcend their faults and become a poignant and entertaining reflection of their sci-fi influences.  This documentary tracks these true-life scientists-turned-amateur filmmakers during the three years leading up to the release of their largest and most intense production to date.  

PENNY LANE & BRIAN L. FRYE received a grant for a feature-length documentary, OUR NIXON.  Throughout Richard Nixon’s presidency, three of his top White House aides obsessively documented their experiences with cheap Super 8 movie cameras.  This unique visual record, created by H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and Dwight Chapin, was seized by the FBI during the Watergate investigation, then filed away and forgotten.  OUR NIXON presents those home movies for the first time, to create an intimate and complex portrait of the Nixon presidency from its idealistic beginning to its tragic end.  The film is structured as a tragedy, driven by dramatic irony.  The story unfolds through the points of view of the three aides, with over 30 hours of footage from 1969 to 1972.  They filmed big events: the Apollo moon landing, anti-war demonstrations, the Republican National Convention, Tricia Nixon’s White House wedding and Nixon’s world-changing trip to China.  But the primary story arc is provided through interviews with the three men themselves, Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Chapin.  In these interviews, collected through intensive archival research, they explain why they served Nixon and how they were let down, betrayed and ruined by him.  These interviews put into sharp relief the heartbreaking naïveté of their home movies, and echo the experience of a great many Americans who supported Nixon only to be betrayed by him in the end.

Previous recipient YORUBA RICHEN was awarded support for a feature-length documentary, The New Black (working title), which uncovers the complicated and often combative histories and intersections of the African-American and LGBT civil rights movements.  Specifically, the film examines homophobia in the black community’s institutional pillar – the black church, and reveals the Christian right wing’s strategy of exploiting this phenomenon in pursuit of an anti-gay political agenda.  The New Black goes from New York to Washington, D.C. to California to document the stories of the gay gospel singer Tonex, and Sharon Lettman, the head of the National Black Justice Coalition (NBJC), who are challenging homophobia in the black church and confronting traditionally white gay organizations around issues of race.  The film also follows Bishop Harry Jackson, one of the leading anti-gay black ministers as he fights efforts to advance gay rights.  Through these stories and other secondary characters, the film reveals a political alliance between members of the black church and the Christian right that has shaped the fight for gay rights over the last 20 years.     

JOSHUA SANCHEZ received a grant for a feature-length narrative called Four.  Written by Pulitzer Prize finalist playwright Christopher Shinn, the film juxtaposes the relationships of two couples struggling with their desires and demons on one Fourth of July evening.  There’s Joe, a seemingly straight, middle-aged black man who carries on a closeted gay relationship with a white teenager named June.  And there’s Abigayle, a suburban, African-American teenage girl, and coincidentally the daughter of Joe, who is courted by a white teenage boy named Dexter.  Dexter has designs of luring Abigayle into the bedroom, and although Abigayle knows she should resist him, she succumbs.  As these four individuals move from strangers to intimates, their tolerance and acceptance of each other break down.  When Joe returns home the morning after a night with June, he and Abigayle are forced to confront Joe’s secret and its impact on their relationship. 

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.