Past
Grantees

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.

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.

AYESHA ADU AND E. G. BAILEY, Minneapolis, MN, received a $10,000 grant in support of Cord, a feature-length narrative film based on Adu's relationship with her mother - a relationship in which she is manipulated into taking on the role of her father.

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.

MATT EHLING, St. Paul, MN, received a $8,000 grant in support of Access, a 60-minute documentary journey through the American spectrum of political and social opinion as reflected through the medium of public access television.

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.

MARY JOHN, Moorhead, MN, received $10,000 for All My Relatives, a 60-minute documentary that chronicles the last 100 years of the Spirit Lake Dakota Nation through four generations of her relatives.

STEVEN KELLY, Minneapolis, MN, received $10,000 in support of Walking Giant, a feature-length documentary that will be a provocative city portrait of modern Beijing, China, presented through the stories and lyrics of China's obscure underground music scene.

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.

MATTHEW MAGRATTEN, Minneapolis, MN, received $17,000 in support of The Well, a short narrative film that explores the decision making process of a group of children in their budding moral universe, and the nature of action when it is free from accountability.