Past
Grantees

Funding was awarded to HANNAH WEYER, for La Escuela (School), a feature-length documentary that follows a Mexican-American migrant teenager over the course of her freshman year in high school.

EMILY ABT and YORUBA RICHEN received support for Take It From Me, a documentary that follows the struggles of six women and their families as they fight to survive in response to drastic changes to the country's welfare system.

PEGGY AHWESH was awarded a grant for a feature-length narrative titled The Star Eaters, based on The Blue of Noon by Georges Bataille. Written in 1935, it tells the story of a man named Troppmann who seems divested of all emotion and social commitment. His relationships are banal, except with one woman for whom he develops an intense love too explosive to sustain.

SHAWN ATKINS - Eyeball, an animated short film that traces the story of a girl who commits a brutal act and literally swallows the evidence. The story follows her as this secret becomes more and more internally disturbing to her, giving her nightmares. This causes her conscious mind to separate from her unconscious.

PHYLLIS BALDINO received a grant for Color without Color, an experimental documentary about Achromatopsia, a rare condition that prevents the eyes from seeing color.

LANA BERNBERG received a grant for Wake Me When It's Over, an experimental narrative that will be a lyrical and elusive story of Helen, a young woman spurned by her mother after revealing her lesbian longings, who plunges into the dark depths of depression.

NICHOLAS BLAIR received support for Coming of Age at the End of the World, a documentary about a 71-year-old Jewish grandmother who takes her granddaughter back to her homeland of Poland, where she faced incredible trauma during the war.

EVA ILONA BRZESKI was given support for Last Seen, a feature-length narrative film about the disappearance of a high school girl, who was last seen running in desperation around a school track in street clothes and bare feet.

MARTHA BURGESS was supported for Ignatz' Nose Travels in Still Life, an interactive CD-ROM that will consciously select a concealed aspect of our culture and tease out its meaning, desirability and use via everyday objects. It will contain a series of still life photographs within which animation, sound tracks, video clips, poems, jokes and interactive stories are associated and accessible.

LAURIE COLLYER received a grant for Nuyorican Dream, a feature-length, video documentary about the attempt of a young Latino man named Robert Torres to leave his comfortable life as a school teacher in California. He returns to the Brooklyn home of his childhood in order to help his troubled family.

TANIA CYPRIANO received a grant for a feature-length documentary titled Grandmother and Her Video Camera, which utilizes the home video of Cypriano's grandmother to chronicle the lives of three generations of her Brazilian immigrant family over a ten-year period.

ALICE ELLIOTT received funding for I'm a Collector!, a feature-length documentary about Larry Selman, the mentally challenged neighbor of Elliott, who raises thousands of dollars each year for charity from neighborhood residents.

RODNEY EVANS received support for Brother to Brother, an experimental narrative that follows the emotional and psychological journey of an eighteen year old gay, African-American artist as he discovers the hidden legacies of the Gay and Lesbian community within the Harlem Renaissance.

JENNIFER FIEBER received a grant for The Sundays of Life, an experimental film that explores the tension between observable objects and their connotations.

NICOLE KOSCHMANN received support for Black, White and Yellow, a short, experimental documentary that will explore the relationship between two sisters - one White and the other Black/Chinese - at a time when their racial difference becomes an issue.

PATRICE MALLARD was provided with a grant for BRIARS WILL CUT: My Mother's Line, a video documentary that tells her story as an African-American woman born in the deep South who traces her matrilineal line back five generations.

GREG PAK received a grant for Brother Killer Wolf, a feature-length documentary that tells the stories of several very different Americans whose lives are intertwined with wolves, including: members of the Nez Perce tribe, who manage the Idaho wolf reintroduction program; a wolf trapper in Alaska; a cattle rancher dealing with wolf depredation; a biologist studying a wolf pack; an activist involved in the save-the-wolf campaign; and a suburban owner of a wolf-dog hybrid.

WALID RAAD received support for Hostage, an experimental documentary about the Western Hostage Crisis. The crisis refers to the abduction and detention in Lebanon in the 1980's and early 1990's of western men such as Terry Anderson, Thomas Sutherland, Terry Waite and Brian Keenan by so-called Islamic Militants. This episode directly and indirectly consumed Lebanese, US, French, and British political and public life. The crisis also precipitated a number of high profile political scandal like the Iran-Contra affair in the US, and L'Affaire Gordgi in France.

POLA RAPAPORT received support for Family Secret, a nonfiction film about Rapaport's discovery in the last few months of a half-brother she never knew existed, who is now in his fifties and lives in Romania.

CRAIG RENAUD received support for This World, a feature-length documentary that tells the two-year story of an inner-city youth, from the projects of Harlem, who struggles to lift up his family from the hardships of ghetto life.