Past
Grantees

BRIAN FRYE, was awarded funding for Wormwood's Dog and Monkey Show, or the Book of Hours, an experimental film that will consist of discarded fragments of film, scraps of leader and laboratory remnants and the remains of half started, abandoned projects by unknown filmmakers-all the residue of a ten to twenty-year period from the early 1950s to the late 1960s, in retrospect the kernel of the American Century, and the period in which the ubiquity of the cinema and the apparent inevitability of American hegemony coincided.

EMILY GOLDBERG, Minneapolis, MN. Goldberg received support for Venus of Mars, a documentary about rock artist Venus de Mars as the eye-catching transgender singer of a Minneapolis glam rock band and her wife negotiate the frontiers of love and gender. On stage, wearing a vinyl corset and stiletto boots, she's Venus, lead singer of the glam rock band All The Pretty Horses. At home in Minneapolis with Lynette, her wife of twenty years, she's Steve. Born male, Venus is transgender. She's "in between" — taking female hormones, but not planning to have sexual reassignment surgery. To some, she's a pioneer, courageously exploring a brave new world of gender identity, free of categorization. To others, she's a freak. Venus of Mars is both the unique coming out story of Venus' gender-redefining journey, and the truly contemporary love story of a couple weathering dramatic changes in uncharted relationship territory.

JENNIFER HARDACKER received funding for an experimental video, The Places We Call Familiar, that focuses on the relationship of memory to the places in which they occurred and the importance places have in our feeling of personal history and belonging.

A grant was awarded to DEJAN KOVACEVIC, for The Secret Lives of Serbs, a documentary that will present a close-up examination of how the Serbian people are now interpreting the brutal atrocities committed recently for the sake of the nation in Kosovo and elsewhere

A grant was awarded to SARAH JANE LAPP, for The House of the Living, a thirty-minute experimental narrative that portrays the last day in the life of a professional eulogist. The film will explore the function of a memory industry and the place of individual humans in producing social nostalgia. It will also delve into the following questions: Why do we strive to create a verbal imprint of a dead soul? How does the individual figure in the collective spiritual mind? How does memory translate the faults of our loved ones? And, why and how does one learn to love a perfect stranger?

STEVE LARSON, St. Paul, MN. Larson received support for Beyond Duluth, a digital narrative about a 17-year-old named Olivia O'Leary Miller, who leaves the home of her couples' therapists parents in order to ostensibly confront a boyfriend who dumped her. Along the way she meets Leon Benson, a man in his 40s who doesn't talk and carries about three to four thousand watts of light bulbs on his coat. As they drive northward, things change and start to get complicated. Light becomes dark, dark becomes light. The story culminates with Leon confronting his past, and Olivia her future through that past.

JULIA LOKTEV, was awarded a grant for the installation/movie, Said in Passing, that presents portraits of 20 women from different backgrounds as they ride the New York City subway. The film portion appears on five screens as it unfolds in space and time. The installation melds documentary and fiction, street photography and performance within the context of urban space. Loktev is a previous Jerome Foundation New York Media Arts grant recipient for Moment of Impact.

ERIC MUELLER, Minneapolis, MN. Mueller received support for Pete & Adrian, a dual-screen digital narrative (in the tradition of the recently released Mike Figgis film Timecode) that looks at the humorously romantic relationship of two men: Pete, a "meter-maid" with low self-esteem and Adrian, an "A-list" aerobics instructor. When the two meet at Adrian's birthday party, it's a simple chemistry of opposites attracting.

KELLY NATHE, Minneapolis, MN. Nathe received support for I Took a Bosnian Lover, a web-based multi-media docu-drama about an American artist traveling solo throughout the post-war Balkans. It's the story of an individual who goes to one of the most politically turbulent places on this planet. She discovers around every corner, over every mountain, and in every ethnic enclave, other individuals who dare to believe that living in a multi-ethnic society is the only path to peace, harmony and spiritual prosperity.

CHRISTOPHER NEWBERRY, Minneapolis, MN. Newberry received support for Agora, a short narrative about a little girl lost in a crowd who has to set aside her panic in order to help another child. Newberry hopes to create a journey into the mind of a lost child by filming from the child's point of view. Ultimately, he hopes to reveal tragedy as only a child sees it.

A grant was awarded to THOMAS PIPER for Can You Get to That: The Welfare to Work Trip, a documentary that tells the uncelebrated stories of lives in transition - stories that can fundamentally change the discussions about poverty and welfare in America, and, in a time of unprecedented wealth, wake people up to the need for a little more compassion.

MARK PITSCH, Minneapolis, MN. Pitsch received support for Uneasy Peace: Ten Years After the Contra War, a 55-minute documentary that asks the question, "Are the lives of ethnic minorities of the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua better off now than they were ten years ago?" The lives of the Nicaraguan people, particularly the multiethnic, multilingual residents of the Atlantic Coast region suggests a much bleaker portrait of living conditions than most Nicaraguan or American officials will admit. This film looks at the plight of the Nicaraguans.

ALEX RIVERA received a grant for Death of a Cybracero, an experimental sci-fi narrative about Mexican farm laborers who live in Tijuana but work in the United States via the internet. They are, in effect, virtual laborers. As the principal character, Jorge, grows closer to achieving his dream of living in the United States in reality, he is forced to choose between continuing to pursue his dream or saving his sister. His sister, Victoria, has been seized by a violent group of vigilantes that patrol futuristic networks looking for illegals, or Netbacks. Will Jorge save his sister from these villains?

DARREN ROARK, Minneapolis, MN. Roark received support for Tilt!, a feature-length film that follows the adventures of four rough and tumble women. After one of them loses a botched beauty pageant, they hit the road to get rich playing pinball. This film will be a loud and obnoxious blend of action and comedy, with a few thrills thrown in for good measure.

TOM SHROEDER, Minneapolis, MN. Shroeder received support for Riding With Harv, a 15-minute animated film about a character named Dave, a college student who is entertained one afternoon by his grandparents' neighbors, Harv and Olga. He is driven around the small town where they live, while they tell stories. Harv and Olga are an old couple who can barely stand each other, but cannot possibly live without one another. During their drive, another motorist scratches Harv's car, which angers him to the point of seeking revenge.

SHELLY SILVER, received funding for an experimental narrative called suicide, about a filmmaker who is contemplating suicide. Rejected by and rejecting her own country, she starts traveling aimlessly, camera in hand. What she did formerly as a profession she now does in desperation, filming everything and everyone in a last ditch effort to make a connection. Zig-zagging the globe, from New York to Osaka to Berlin to Mexico, as she increasingly loses touch with reality. Her filming becomes more searching, poignant and aggressive.

EVE SUSSMAN received funding for China/White - Scenes from an Exile, a panoramic film/video that will be shown as a gallery installation. It is about two principal characters, HER and HIM, who are caught in the turmoil of emotional, psychological and physical exile and take their dysfunctional communication to its erotic limit. Their condition is contrasted by the presence of LEAH, THE DOG, THE SOOTHSAYER and THE STRANGER, who foil the couple's unbearable existentialism.

REIKO TAHARA, was awarded a grant for Enmyoin, a documentary that will provide critical social analysis, from the filmmaker's point of view, of Sister Enmyoin, a 95-year-old Japanese female Buddhist priest who passed away in August 1999.

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.

GREG YOLEN, Minneapolis, MN. Yolen received support for Don Ciegna, a 35mm feature-film about former baseball great Sam Maddox and his attempts to escape the consequences of his bi-polar personality. Sam led a rollercoaster life. Good looking and athletic, he breezed through his childhood as the playground enforcer. During his youth he was the designated hitter on the school team, which led to his successful career on the baseball diamond. At the same time, however, dark visions began to creep into his consciousness. He found himself plunged from the heights of being on top to the depths of complete desperation. This film follows his tumultuous journey.