Past
Grantees

SARAH GOODMAN was awarded a grant in support of Build Me Up, Break Me Down, a documentary that examines the daily reality of three diverse youth in the US Army. It will explore their motives for joining and the impact of training on their respective identities.

Funding was awarded to JACQUELINE GOSS for Kishlak Dwellers, an animated video illustration of Soviet scientist A.R. Lurias 1933 book Cognitive Development: Its Cultural and Social Foundation. This animated video will present data collected from three years of experiments with Uzbek farmers who lived in the outer regions of the Soviet Union in the early 1930s.

Funding was awarded to SHAUN IRONS & LAUREN PETTY for Artificial Paradise, a four-channel video/audio installation inspired by the mysterious and strange beauty of the miracles performed by Jesus as described in the New Testament; exploring the connections among miracles, faith, deceit and illusion. Irons and Petty are attracted to the notion that people are willing to suspend belief that their lives could be magnificently and instantly altered, releasing them from the tension and banality of daily existence. The work will be a meditation on the need for faith and the desire for the miraculous in contemporary life.

ANNEMARIE JACIR received funding for Travelogue: Fractured Landscapes, a film that is both a visual poem and narrative exploration of how the rhythms of daily life are interrupted for a mixed group of artists traversing the emotional and material geography of a landscape fractured by political and military turmoil.

KEITH ROLLINS LOCKWOOD, Minneapolis, MN, was awarded funding for Radio Documentary, a documentary that will explore the vanishing culture of American radio. It will examine the large corporate dominance of radio, the disappearance of DJs, and the struggle of non-profit radio stations, through the microcosm of Bozeman, Montana, and the small non-profit community-owned radio station KGLT.

A grant was awarded to STEPHEN MARSHALL AND JOSH SHORE, in support of True Lies, a documentary that seeks to inform people about the way in which media is used to obscure the true intent of its disseminationnamely to target people with coercive techniques to make better consumers out of them.

LISELLE MEI was awarded a grant for Lower East Side Stories, a dramatic short presented in a series of four sequential portraits of women living in the Lower East Side of New York City. This film is designed to be a cultural homage to evoke color, culture and history of the neighborhood.

MICHELLE MEHRI MOUSAVI, Minneapolis, MN, received support for My Life As A Terrorist, an experimental documentary that recounts the filmmakers experience growing up Iranian in the aftermath of the Iran Hostage Crisis. It explores two vastly different but historically intertwined narratives: the story of American hostage Robert C. Ode, who was held in the United States Embassy in Tehran, Iran, for 444 days; and the filmmakers experience as an Iranian-American child enrolled in American educational institutions for 10 years.

ALYSA J. NAHMIAS received funding to support Unfinished Spaces: Cubas Architecture of Revolution, a documentary exploring the Cuban Revolution through its most significant architectural achievementThe Cuban National Art Schools. It follows the lives of the three architects who designed the schools, Ricardo Porro, Vittorio Garatti, and Roberto Gottardi, providing visual encounters with their architecture. Their massive undertaking began with great energy; however, construction stopped in the mid-1960s. The architects have recently been invited to resume work to complete the building they began 40 years ago.

REYNOLD REYNOLDS received support for Soil, an installation and short film resulting in a poetic document of decline, decay, and deterioration a return of all that is mortal to the soil.

BEN RIESMAN, Minneapolis, MN, received a grant to support FLIGHT, a performance and video installation in which participants take part in a ritual that recalls NASA launches as well as religious practices, drawing linkages between religious and secular ritual experience.

RICHARD ROWLEY & JACQUELINE SOOHEN received a grant for The Fourth World War, an experimental film that weaves together intensely intimate footage from six conflictsin Argentina, Chiapis, Palestine, South Africa, Korea and the war on terror as it moves through New York, Afghanistan and Iraq. Its layered, polyphonic editing style reveals points of connection among communities coming to terms with the violent reorganization of every aspect of their lives and worlds.

LYNNE SACHS received support for Visit to a State of Unbelonging, a 70-minute cine-essay that explores the various ways we can know, confront and identify with another human being. Using a pastiche of both authentic and fabricated artifacts, the film reconstructs the lives of three peoplethe father of the director, a distant relative who fled post-World War II Europe for the countryside of Brazil, and an Israeli woman encountered in a newspaper article.

RUTH SERGEL received support for Belle, a short narrative fable of old age and beauty, which explores the intersection of age, race and family ties; celebrating the challenges of our imperfect humanity.

KIRK RAY SHANNON-BUTTS received a grant in support of blueprint, a feature-length narrative following college freshmen Ross, 17 and Malick, 19, who meet on the last day of their first year of college. Feeling liberated, Malick is set to roam off into the heat, the sun and fun of summer when he stumbles across the studious Ross, who is gearing up for a semester abroad (starting the very next morning). Before he begins his trip, Ross finds himself swept into Malicks carefree and adventurous world as they spend the day exploring New York City, each other and beyond. blueprint is a film about identity, intellect, attraction and self-discovery.

Funding was awarded to THERESE SHECHTER to support I Was a Teenage Feminist, a first-person journey into a movement that once sparked social revolution, yet now invokes indifference and disdain. In the hopes of reclaiming feminism as a tool for personal and political power, the filmmaker will explore the F-word from a variety of perspectives. The work is a one-hour digital video documentary and personal examination of one of the 20th centurys most important socio-political movements.

WILLIAM SLICHTER, Minneapolis, MN, was awarded a grant for Flourtown, an animated short that combines live action with animation, telling the story of corporate greed and the redemptive power of art. It focuses on two children of artists, who die in an accident stemming from the negligence of a group of industrialists who own a tornado factory. The story follows the lives of the artist couple as they recover from the tragedy.

LAURIE STERN & DAN LUKE, St. Paul, MN, received support for Carry it Forward, a documentary about the lives of Paul and Sheila Wellstone. It will explore the origin of Paul Wellstones politics, his controversial road to the Senate, his deep bond with his wife and co-Senator Sheila, and the legacy of a life of progressive populism.

MARK STREET was awarded a grant for Rockaway, an experimental film about three teenage girls who stay up all night and wander city streets as a final celebration of their high school graduation. Through their conversations with denizens of the Rockaway section of Queens, New York, the viewer learns about the challenges they face as residents of a place torn between the allure of the city and the tenuous comfort of the suburbs.

SHASHWATI TALUKDAR was awarded a grant in support of Eunuch Alley, a Bollywood noir about journalists, gangsters, eunuchs, mothers and castration.