Past
Grantees

A grant was awarded to STEPHANIE WANG-BREAL for TOUGH LOVE, a feature-length documentary about the conflicting values, uncertainties and tensions that surround the child welfare system. The film follows 23-year old Hasna Hanna, a first-generation Bangladeshi immigrant who, along with her devoted husband Philly, navigates the child welfare system of New York City to get their children back and out of foster care. By following Hanna and Philly, the film will provide a birds eye view of how the system works from the inside. Viewers will experience, firsthand, the hardships and value judgments Hanna and Philly face, as individuals and as a couple, as they attempt to keep their family together.

MAYA WASHINGTON was awarded a grant in support of Through the Banks of the Red Cedar. A play on the Michigan State University fight song, this work follows the filmmakers father, wide-receiver Gene Washington (College Football Hall of Famer and 50 Greatest Vikings honoree) and notable teammates from the 1965 and 1966 Michigan State National Championship teams, as they change the literal face of college and professional football, impacting the lives of their children and generations to follow. The film unfolds through the eyes of the filmmaker, Maya Washington, as she uncovers the individual journeys of these legends their coaches, spouses, friends, children, and grandchildrenrevealing the ways in which football scholarships impacted the lives of players of color, who were literally dropped into an integrated environment for the first time. This film also looks at the lives of generations that followed at the height of the Civil Rights Movement in America. Ultimately, Through the Banks of the Red Cedar is Maya Washingtons story in that it looks at how winning a Big Ten football scholarship in 1963 changed her fathers life, the face of the game, and her own future.

A grant was awarded to CALEB WOOD in support of his experimental hand drawn animated film, MN: Animated Portrait of Minnesota, which focuses on Minnesotas diverse and unique landscapes, wild life, and humanity. The film will stagger back and forth from nature and wildlife to civilization and human behavior. The juxtaposition of these elements will present the year long observed relationship that Minnesotans have with their seasonal environment, ranging from oblivious to harmonious. It will also highlight the beauty of the state's designated and untouched wildlife. A balance between nature and humanity will be the underlying motif. The overall message of MN: Animated Portrait of Minnesota is to present a series of truths that the state of Minnesota holds. The film will be a didactic look at the environment, as well as a work aiming to push the boundaries of how hand drawn animation can be made and used to share experiences in life. This is not a narrative story with a clear conclusion, it is a collection of moments, found through personal exploration in art and environment, composed in a poetic manner.

THE PLAYWRIGHTS’ CENTER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, as fiscal sponsor for the WORKHAUS PLAYWRIGHTS COLLECTIVE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $15,000 in support of the production of new works by emerging playwrights.  The Playwrights’ Center champions playwrights and plays to build upon a living theater that demands new and innovative works.  The Workhaus Playwrights Collective is a group of Minneapolis-based playwrights who have curated and produced each other’s work as company-in-residence at The Playwrights’ Center since 2006.  Each three-play season is chosen by mutual consent of the nine-member collective of playwrights.  Workhaus supports the playwright’s ability to know which play is ready to produce and when.  Writers create and present plays as they envision them by taking all major aesthetic decisions into their own hands.  This entails both greater responsibility and greater artistic risk.  The goal of Workhaus is to create a culture of new work.

A grant was awarded to SAM ZALUTSKYfor How to Make it to the Promised Land, a narrative short about Lizzie Lenthem, a Southern California teenager who struggles with the everyday perils of contemporary adolescence: divorced and bickering parents, sexual exploration, fitting in. But Lizzie, who gets sent to a Jewish camp by her mother, must grapple with larger issues when she is forced to play a Holocaust role-play game at camp. Under the guise of an educational experience, Lizzie and the other campers are divided into SS Officers and Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1941. Lizzie plays Anya Ossevsheva, a 21-year-old mother of four who has to find her husband and escape to America (which in reality is the other side of the summer camp) without getting caught by the SS and being sent to a concentration camp. As the game devolves into chaos, Lizzie tries to avoid the ever-increasing frenzy of the campers and the zealousness of her counselors, ultimately realizing that she can no longer participate in this strange game of memory and identification.

The Jerome Foundation awarded $15,000 to ACCINOSCO, Brooklyn, New York, in support of the development and production of a new work. Accinosco is a collective of performing artists, designers, and musicians dedicated to creating groundbreaking original works that meld music, texts, technical and theatrical design, and video with unbelievable fact and outrageous fiction. Writer-composer-performer Cynthia Hopkins and her collaborators will research and produce a work devoted to the climate crisis, This Clement World, to premiere during the 2013-14 season. It seeks to illuminate the way in which humanity is currently poisoning its own well, rendering its habitat inhospitable to itself, and the requisite changes of behavior necessary to maintain a habitable climate for generations of people hundreds of years into the future. This Clement World will be a musical-video museum installation, a series of partially improvised performances portraying a variety of guides for the museum display, and an evening-length performance work in three acts.

BROOKLYN ARTS EXCHANGE, New York City, as fiscal sponsor for choreographer LUCIANA ACHUGAR, received $10,000 in support of the development and production of the new work Feeling Form. BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange is a multi-faceted performing arts center dedicated to the development of emerging artists and providing a home for groundbreaking dance and theater. Its programs are constructed to provide opportunities for the creation and production of new artistic works by emerging artists. Choreographer luciana achugar is an emerging Uruguayan choreographer based in Brooklyn. Feeling Form, an evening-length dance duet, will look at dance as a celebration of experience by indulging in the pleasure of being in the body. It will be sensual, fluid, sinuous, and at times sexual because it will be about embracing pleasure. The two dancers will split the stage and very rigorously mirror one another, creating a kaleidoscopic dance. In Feeling Form, achugar aims to erase the difference between seeing the dance and feeling the dance.

PANGEA WORLD THEATER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, acting as fiscal sponsor for ANICCHA ARTS, received $9,000 to support the creation and production of the new work In Habit [living in a pattern] by Pramila Vasudevan. Pangea World Theater promotes conversations about race, gender, ethnicity, human rights, politics, and social justice through performances and educational programs. It is committed to international works, styles and traditions that illuminate the human condition, end divisiveness, and celebrate differences. Aniccha Arts operates under the direction of Pramila Vasudevan, a contemporary Indian dancer and a professionally-trained visual media designer who investigates the synthesis of dance and media to create immersive performance environments. In Habit [living in a pattern] uses sight, sound, and movement to explore how acquired physical behavior becomes part of a societys structure, and becomes socialized into individuals of that culture, when the original purpose of that behavior can no longer be recalled.

IVY BALDWIN DANCE, Brooklyn, New York, received $3,000 toward the creation and production of Ambient Cowboy. Formed in 1999 by Ivy Baldwin, the company is dedicated to the creation and performance of new contemporary dance. Ambient Cowboy continues Baldwins interest in deconstructing and combining disparate elements and influences to create mysterious, surreal worlds, full of emotional and physical extremes. Ambient Cowboy explores contrasting elements through dance, drama, sound, and setting. Baldwin is using ideas of transparency and reflection to inform and influence choreographic structure, emotional content, and movement vocabulary.

ANGAD BHALLA received $10,000 for The House That Herman Built, a documentary that follows the creative journey of Herman Wallace, one of the Angola 3 (three men who have been held in solitary confinement for 38 years at the notorious Louisiana State Penitentiary known as Angola for a murder they say they did not commit and for speaking out against inhumane prison conditions and racial segregation). Wallace and New Orleans based artist Jackie Sumell developed a friendship and six-year creative collaboration that resulted in The House That Herman Built, a constellation of creative works that were born out of the question: What kind of a house does a man who has lived in a six-foot-by-nine-foot cell for over 30 years dream of? This documentary focuses on the evolving relationship of Wallace and Sumell, starting with Sumell initially writing to Wallace in 2001. The power of that single letter culminated in a travelling exhibition, a book and, ultimately, designs for a 2-story, 3,000 square foot green home that emerged from the imagination of a man who, according to filmmaker Angad Bhalla, has been locked in the darkest dungeon of Americas criminal justice system.

ALICE COX received $8,000 for Poisonberry, a short fiction film about Minnie, an Asian-American child whose estranged father kidnaps her from her loving, yet reckless young mother. Separated since Minnie was an infant, her father faces deportation proceedings, while her mother barely makes ends meet haplessly pursuing an acting career. In the film, Minnie finds she has to make do on her own as best she can with her fathers ultimate abandonment and her mothers ongoing cycle of codependent relationships. Poisonberry is about a child who turns a corner after tasting first-hand the plight of struggling adults. The films title is inspired by a quote from Salman Rushdies Midnights Children, because children are the vessels into which adults pour their poison...

ENRICO CULLEN received a grant for SALT IN THE AIR, a feature-length documentary that tells the stories of salt miners, mine engineers, doctors, patients and residents of Solotvyno, a small Ukrainian village located deep in the Carpathian Mountains on the border with Romania. A huge salt mine with purportedly the purest salt on Earth exists beneath the town, but also looms large in the towns future. The salt is so pure that inhaling it can virtually cure asthma in children. Its also a highly valuable resource for this poor community. Today, the salt mine is collapsing, the miners have held protests, and the mine director was recently fired. Members of the Ukrainian presidential cabinet have held high level talks about what to do with the mine. In short, the coming months and years will spell out Solotvynos future. Does the phrase, No salt mine was ever abandoned by Ferdinand Braudel (Civilization and Capital, 1979) carry within it the struggles of the past and a prediction for the future; namely, that the Solotvyno Salt Mine will be sustained? In a sense, Solotvyno serves as a metaphor for the broader relationship of human beings to Earth. Can we transform the way we live so that our darker, exploitative impulses serve a higher purpose? This film will examine that question and more.

Previous recipient JASON DaSILVA was awarded support for When I Walk, a feature-length documentary that chronicles DaSilvas rapid loss of mobility over a five-year period, his emotional journey along the way, and his pursuit of a new identity. Five years ago, after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS), DaSilva discovered there were few stories or personal accounts documenting the physical and emotional experience of dealing with the disease. While there is an array of resources written from a medical perspective, there are no documentary narratives exploring the unusual and surreal experience of watching your body rapidly deteriorate. Given that MS is the most common neurological disease, DaSilva found this surprising. He wanted to understand the journey of those who had gone before him, yet there were few accounts. His doctors were telling him that in five years he would be in a wheelchair, possibly without eyesight, and perhaps also losing the ability to use his hands. At the time, he did not believe the doctors. Yet at the same time, being a filmmaker, he decided to turn the camera on himself and begin recording. Now after five years, some of what was foretold has come true. He is now in a wheelchair and has lost all mobility in his legs. Fortunately, however, he has captured the experience through this documentary film, which he wishes to share with others.

THE FIELD, New York City, as fiscal sponsor for FAYE DRISCOLL DANCE GROUP, Brooklyn, New York, received $8,000 in support of the development and production of notnot (working title). Founded by artists for artists, The Field is dedicated to providing strategic services to performing artists and companies in New York City and beyond. It fosters creative exploration, stewards innovative management strategies, and helps artists reach their fullest potential. Faye Driscoll is a choreographer who investigates new forms of theatrical experience aimed to provoke feeling, stimulate the senses, and activate the mind. The new evening-length work notnot (working title) examines the tension among beauty, power, and desire. Driscoll will probe the subject of beauty as it is manifested through the ineffable promise of romantic love, as a perpetual dangling carrot, as myth, in the blurred power domain between varied cultural definitions of masculine/feminism, and as the performative aspect of inevitably dissolving selves.

BART EVERLY received support for Velvet Vision, a feature-length documentary about photographer and filmmaker James Bidgood, whose iconic work of the 1960s helped define the burgeoning movement of gay photography and film. His beefcake photographs were unlike any other at the time, featuring elaborate fantasy scenarios drenched in lush, saturated color. His film Pink Narcissus was shrouded in mystery upon its release, having been credited to Kenneth Anger and Andy Warhol, among others, until the late 1980s when it was revealed that it was actually the work of one man, James Bidgood. Bidgood recently received a grant from Creative Capital to shoot a new series of gay photographs. Velvet Vision follows him in the process of shooting again as well as delving into his past as window dresser, drag artist and costume designer.

FRACTURED ATLAS, New York City, serving as fiscal sponsor for independent artist REID FARRINGTON, Brooklyn, New York, received $9,000 in support of the development and production of a new work. Fractured Atlas, serving a national community of artists and arts organizations, facilitates the creation of art by offering vital support to the artists who produce it. Reid Farringtons vision for the theater is to bring the cinematic world of film to life on stage. He blends new and old techniques of staging, creates new technologies for production, and explores new aesthetic combinations of living and projected actors. Dickens: The Unparalleled Necromancer is a variation on A Christmas Carol. Dickens story has been adapted into over 70 films spanning over 100 years of cinema. Necromancer will tell that 100 years of film history by using a mash-up technique. A single line from A Christmas Carol will be interpreted through multiple actors from film history, in a cohesive order of various actors from each of the 70 films. Necromancer uses the format of a traditional Victorian magic show, based the idea of Dickens as a magician.

NATHAN FISHER received $10,000 for Rebuilding Cold River a verite-style feature-length documentary on the United Nations-led rebuilding of Nahr al-Bared, a Lebanese city that was completely destroyed by the Lebanese Army in a 2007 war. The city was relentlessly shelled for over three months until the entire population of 31,000 civilians fled. The Lebanese Army engaged in the shelling campaign in an effort to root out a dozen or so Islamic militants accused of robbing a bank. More than four years later, Nahr al-Bared has yet to be rebuilt and most of the towns former residents, all Palestinians who were born in Lebanon but do not have Lebanese citizenship, remain scattered in overcrowded tent cities throughout the country. No state on earth considers the 31,000 displaced Palestinians its citizens, which leaves them with the only option of returning to their city to rebuild. This documentary will follow the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) as it supervises the rebuilding of Nahr al-Bared, a monumental effort that involves the construction of apartment buildings, parks, schools, doctors office, shopping centers and so much more.

A grant was awarded to YANCE FORD in support of Strong Island, a gut-wrenchingly powerful feature-length documentary that explores the murder of the directors brother in 1992, looking at the way in which race influenced the investigation into his death and the effect the murder had on his family. It is an examination of how grief plays out over time. In 1992 there were 11,175 black men murdered in America. The filmmakers brother was among them. A black 24-year-old schoolteacher, he had been arguing with a white 19-year-old mechanic about the quality of a repair job. This rather common scenario turned deadly when the mechanic retrieved a .22 caliber rifle from the shop office and shot Ms. Fords brother once in the chest. When his killer claimed self-defense, the police focused their investigation solely Ms. Fords brother. When the DA decided not to press charges against the mechanic, Fords family retreated into a devastating silence. After nearly twenty years, the filmmaker has decided that its time for the silence to end. (All three panelists described this project as one of the most powerful they have ever seen. I thought the artful subtleties of the work sample were devastating. This is a truly remarkable project that is quite possibly the most compelling Ive seen in my years at Jerome.)

THE FIELD, New York City, as fiscal sponsor for MIGUEL GUTIERREZ AND THE POWERFUL PEOPLE, New York City, received a grant of $9,000 in support of the creation, development, and production of the new work And Lose the Name of Action. The Field is dedicated to providing strategic services to performing artists and companies in New York City and beyond. It fosters creative exploration, stewards innovative management strategies, and helps artists reach their fullest potential. Miguel Gutierrez makes solo and group pieces with a variety of artists under the moniker Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People. In his work, the interplay of movement, text, sound, and light creates, for the performers and the audience, an immersive state of immediacy and attention. And Lose the Name of Action will be an evening-length performance that uses dance and improvisation as the bridge between discoveries from research into neurology, embodied philosophy, somatic/healing practices, and the paranormal.

The NEW YORK FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS, New York City, as fiscal sponsor for choreographer MARIA HASSABI, received $8,000 in support of the development and production of a new evening-length work, SHOW (working title), created by Hassabi. The New York Foundation for the Arts seeks to empower artists at critical stages in their creative lives. It provides fiscal sponsorship to individual artists and emerging organizations. Hassabis works are concerned with the language of images. Her interests lie in the way we see images and how our first conceptions may be shifted as they are suspended in time. SHOW begins the moment the doors of the theater open, and in the course of an hour, examines the basic ingredients existing within live performance in an attempt to revitalize them. Hassabi will create an installation in which the various components necessary for performance exist as individual bodies of activity. At the core of SHOWs exploration is the crucial paradox that exists within live performance: the attempt to be present in the moment within a pre-constructed theatricality.