Past
Grantees

MITCH DEOUDES was awarded support for The Death of Doctor Island, an experimental 35mm narrative that tells the story of a mentally ill boy trapped on what appears to be a deserted island, told as a cycle of seven installments. According to Deoudes, the film is an experiment in immersion and persistence in cinema, which touches on themes of morality, socialization, and sacrifice.

JRG FOCKELE received a grant for #1 Train, a short narrative that follows two brothers, seven year-old Marc and four year-old Daniel, as they cope with the disintegration of their family. Their mother is addicted to alcohol and their father is absent from the family. In a drunken rage, the boys' mother abandons them one evening, prompting Marc and Daniel to set out to find her.

A grant was awarded to SARAH FRIEDLAND for Thing With No Name, a feature-length documentary that tracks the rebirth of a rural South African community plagued by AIDS. The film also focuses on an HIV-positive individual's recovery through treatment. The title of the film addresses the fierce taboo and stigma attached to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa. This fear of rejection is so paralyzing that the name of the virus is rarely spoken aloud, especially among those who are directly impacted by HIV/AIDS.

JENNIFER GRAUSMAN received funding for Pressure Cooker, a feature-length documentary that chronicles the senior year of several inner city public high school students as they are transformed by a teacher and her kitchen. Their unorthodox teacher is Wilma Stephenson, a 37-year veteran of Frankford High School. With high expectations, a borderline-ecclesiastical devotion to her students and a boot-camp styled approach, she pushes her students to grow, mature and aspire-both inside and outside the kitchen. Her distinctive personal approach pays off-last year her seniors won over $500,000 in scholarships. And this year she is hoping they earn even more. Pressure Cooker is a coming-of-age story about the slow, sometimes painful, process of learning and becoming. The film speaks to the essence of education.

A grant was awarded to LOVISA INSERRA for BUSTER, a super-8 feature-length experimental narrative about a man named Buster who spends all his time provoking strangers into fights, then refuses to defend himself as they pummel him until they grow bored. BUSTER is a grifter, sucking his brother dry, and a cancer, sabotaging his brother's relationship with his girlfriend. Think of him as the patron saint of passive aggression, the don of all losers, or maybe just a regular guy who lost his mind trying to avoid growing up. This is also the story of the people who don't run away from Buster.

MARYAM KESHAVARZ received support for a feature-length documentary called Persian Fashionistas: A New Generation of Revolutionaries. The film looks into the lives of a select group of Tehrani youth struggling to attain freedom under the conservative watch of the Iranian government. These youth represent a generation that has grown tired of restriction and is using fashion as a form of political resistance.

ANDREW J. KOEHLER was awarded a grant for List of Schindler?s Part 1, an experimental series of six short live action/animated films that revel in a world of guided mistranslation. Using a very specific process of translation and retranslation, Koehler has taken the script from Schindler's List and twisted it beyond recognition. From there, form is given to the mangled words that are now devoid of identifiable characters, events and even sentence structure. This film series is about the delicate balance of language and intent, and what happens when both are thrown forcefully out of whack. Koehler hijacks the language of the original script and transforms it, building an entirely different creature that abides by none of the rules of the physical world, as we know it. List of Schindler?s serves as an irreconcilable contrast to Schindler's List, which Koehler expects will produce a more profound effect on an audience that has some stake in its relationship to the source material.

SUSAN MARKS received support for Our Wildest Dreams: A True Crime Documentary of Dolls and Murder, an intimate look at dolls that are used to solve crimes, the woman who created them, our collective fascination with forensics, and the stories we like to tell ourselves about death. This film will be very unpredictable, even quirky, humorous and shocking as it challenges viewers through its revealing examinations of our odd relationship with death, our own mortality, our need for mythical death storytelling (i.e. crime television) and the reality that murderers usually know their victims.

MITCH MCCABE received a grant for Youth Knows No Pain, a feature-length documentary about the fear of aging and one filmmaker's comical journey through America's anti-aging industry, all set against the backdrop of her father's plastic surgery practice. Traveling across America and visiting everyone from doctors to celebrities, scientists, Star Magazine editors and a cross-section of real life characters who have gone to crazy lengths to beat the clock, Youth Knows No Pain creates a tableau of the aging hysteria. As the film sheds light on both the absurdity and the biological foundation of this obsession, it entertains as it dispels myths, exposes dark truths, and confirms that one thing is for sure-the aging obsession has become a national obsession.

Support was awarded to MOON MOLSON for MEADOWLANDZ, a narrative short about a crew of four black street kids who find a drunken African passed out in the hallway of their tenement building. When it is revealed that the drunk is actually the father of Marquis, one of the four teens in the crew, the young men find themselves on a rag-tag journey through the urban darkness in search of a place for the unconscious man to sleep. As the night dwindles on, tensions flare and a final explosion of street codes, machismo and youthful pride threaten to make the place they find for the drunken man to sleep, the bottom of a swamp between New York City and New Jersey-the murky, reed-clotted depths of The Meadows. Although MEADOWLANDZ is a hip-hop neo-noir, instead of glorifying the street culture of violence and misogyny typical of this urban youth culture, the film indicts it as a dangerous code of conduct found in terminal machismo values. The film is a parable on the dangers of peer pressure and humiliation.

JILA NIKPAY received support for In Waiting, a short eight-minute 16mm experimental film exploring, from an intimate perspective, issues of dislocation. This autobiographical project follows Nikpay's desire to understand and discover the language of nomadic existence, the phenomena of moving between cultures. For inspiration, Nikpay draws upon fairy tales, poetry, political tract, and her own personal history living in self-imposed exile. In Waiting will be formally arranged, celebrating the female body and enticing the viewer to take pleasure in its sensuality. The presence of a female voice will contribute a subconscious counterpoint, portraying a deep desire for belonging, rooted in memory.

Support was awarded to RAMON ALBERTO NUEZ for Concrete Jungles: The True Story of Street Kids in America, a feature-length documentary that looks at the unsettling story of street kids (homeless, runaway, at-risk and outcast) in America. It will examine the invisibility in a largely apathetic society. It will also look at youth outreach programs, what they do, their importance to kids in need, and their struggles to remain operational in a sharply reduced funding environment. Nuez will employ stylistically unusual production elements to make his film both appealing and relevant to the very youth it examines.

Support was awarded to IAN OLDS for Watch it Burn, an hour-long documentary that follows Christian Parenti of The Nation magazine as he pursues a story on the state of Afghanistan five years after September 11th. What emerges is an intimate how the sausage gets made look at journalism in a war zone and, more importantly, a portrait of everyday Afghans trying to cope with the aftermath of America's forgotten war.

RACHEL PERKOFF was awarded a grant for a feature-length documentary called Another Lost Angel. On June 26, 1980, Kat Perkoff, the sister of the filmmaker, died in a white Mercedes after it veered off a highway, hit a concrete bridge support and split cleanly in half. Kat's high-drama, high-impact death was in some way an inexorable conclusion to a life lived with voracious and feverish intensity. In her brief 23 years, Kat Perkoff inhabited many personae: runaway, drug smuggler, gay bar manager, writer, local icon, and key player in the murky underworld of the New Orleans lesbian mafia-a demimonde populated by pimps, prostitutes and corrupt cops. Even for the fast lane of the French Quarter in the early 1970's, Kat's life hurtled along at several times the average speed. Another Lost Angel explores Kat's poetic life and violent death. The official report of the New Orleans Police Department states that Kat's death was caused by accidental collision. But rumors at the time pointed to a hit, mafia score, and a police cover-up. The filmmaker's quest to remember and reconstruct has become the catalyst for a broader meditation on collective memory, amnesia, fate and biography.

DAVE RYAN received a grant for The Hungering Deep, an experimental animated video that explores the foundations of self in the murky mixture of memory, subconscious realms of longing, and the physical realms of neural signals. As science peers deeper into the mechanics of our physical brains, the mystery of that mixture, and of the self inside it, grow ever more potent to the contemporary imagination. The primary metaphor for The Hungering Deep is an ocean at the very roots of the nervous system-the imaginary shore of the synapse. This metaphor establishes three levels: memory, subconscious and neural signal-each represented as distinctly different chapters in the film. The Hungering Deep brings video and film footage into a 3D environment, and applies texture mapping to create animated moving landscapes.

GABRIELLA SPIERER received funding toward the production of Raising Inmate 3851, a documentary that takes a look at the practice of prosecuting children as adults in the United States, a phenomenon that has put thousands of children behind bars with adult criminals. It unfolds in segments, using personal stories to illustrate different aspects of the problem. The idea of the film is to offer glimpses into the lives of children who committed crimes, their parents and the authorities, in order to raise questions about and provide perspectives on the real consequences of judicial and legislative policies.

RAY TINTORI received a grant for Glory at Sea!, a narrative short that takes place in 2008 New Orleans after another Katrina-like storm. The story's hero, Jake, and his girlfriend Tess sink into the clutches of Hell-not a fiery inferno, but an expanse of condemned souls planted like cornstalks at the bottom of the ocean. As Tess sinks into the sand, Jake is suddenly spat back up toward the surface. He emerges from the water, half alive, and finds himself in a mangled, dystopic American landscape. He begins constructing a raft out of the rubble of the city, planning on going to sea alone to rescue Tess. As he builds, survivors who also have loved ones lost in the underwater Hades begin to emerge from the bombed-out wasteland. Defying a clergy that declares Jake a pariah and his mission an affront to God's will, a community of fierce and devastated people join him in his epic task, seemingly doomed to failure. Jake's raft slowly transforms from a mere vehicle into a sprawling shrine of memorials and sentiments dedicated to the victims lost beneath the water. Driven by longing, desire, and their refusal to accept the idea that their loved ones were meant to die, they set sail to stage a veritable prison break from death itself. Glory at Sea! Is a film about love, loss, and hope, built from the rubble that still blankets every corner of New Orleans.

LUCI WESTPHAL was awarded support for All's Well and Fair, an hour-long documentary that gives a unique perspective on growth and identity, choice and consequence, through portraying three punk rock mothers and their children over a ten-year interval of life on the fringes of society. Giving voice to the three mothers as well as to their five children, All's Well and Fair questions the stereotypes of welfare moms and alternative culture. It also examines the pitfalls of capitalism and mass market culture and living on the cusp of poverty. Do these women lead lives of integrity outside of the mainstream system, or have they just subjected themselves and their children to living in poverty and feeding off the system? And did they actually have a choice? The documentary ultimately focuses on the idea of knowing and being yourself.

KEITH BEARDEN received a grant for Train Town, a experimental narrative film that will center on two middle-aged men in a small American town who attempt to live out their fantasies of a perfect world through the creation of an elaborate realistic model train diorama. The idyllic happenings in the totally controlled miniature town will be inter-cut with their own sharply contrasting real lives: one, a schoolteacher with contempt for his students, little connection to his own children and a strained relationship with his ex-wife; the other, a paranoid reactionary who shelters himself in pre-60's nostalgia and sees enemies of the American Dream in every immigrant, progressive or libertine. Train Town will examine themes of male fantasy, obsession, non-communication, fear of age and death, and the role sexual/emotional frustration plays in the seeds of fascism.

A grant was awarded to CHERIEN DABIS for Make a Wish a short narrative personal journey that follows Mariam, a young Palestinian girl, on the day of her late father's birthday. While the film does not specifically indicate how the father died, it does make political references that indicate it is related to the current political turmoil. The theme is the devastating impact of political conflict and war: love, loss and grief on a deep, personal level. The film is both a celebration of life and a work of mourning.