Past
Grantees

JEREMY XIDO received support for The Angola Project, a documentary film about peopleAfrican and Chinesewhose lives are intimately intertwined through the Chinese reconstruction of the Benguela Railway in Angola. Its a road movie. Or in this case, a rail movie. Travelling across country, Simo Branco de Sousa, a former child soldier, passes through the lives of a series of characters, Chinese and Angolan, who have all pinned their hopes and dreams for the future on this massive reconstruction project: Jing-Wei Zhang (aka Linda), a pretty young vivacious translator working for the CR-20 construction company; Manuel, the equally young and hopeful Angolan train driver finally living his childhood dream; Filomena, the owner of a tiny bar and mother of a sick girl; Ji Hong, a fifty-two-year-old Chinese transport train driver with a crush on Filomena; and finally, Sheng Li Xiao, a worn down construction worker with a deep gambling debt who lays train tracks in the middle of nowhere. As the train plunges through the countryside, the film will dive into the intimate personal stories of these people who have clustered around the train line like moths drawn to a light bulb in the middle of the night. They each put an idiosyncratic human face to one of the major Global phenomena of the 21st century the Chinese reconstruction of Africa.

JOHN AKRE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a grant for Walker and Driver, an animated feature comedy musical about what happens when cars get a little too important. Walker, one of two central characters in the film, is a race car ace who grew up in the grandstands of a motor raceway and was born to drive. After a tragic accident during a big race, he gives up driving and secretly walks from place to place for transportation. His wife, Penny Driver, the other central character in the film, writes copy for automobile advertising. She seeks to transcend her daily life by creating advertisements that strive to convey the sensation of the absolute perfect driving experience. As world traffic jams increase, Walker has to try harder and harder to hide his secret life as a pedestrian. His wife is close to discovering his secret when a series of car crashes incapacitate most of her body. But her head is preserved, which allows her continue to develop automobile advertising that inspires the world to continue dreaming about ideal automobiles. When all the cars of the world smash into a massive Wreckage Mountain, it is up to Walker, who has found a spot on top of the mountain, to teach the rest of the world how to walk again. This animated tale is a direct expression of the filmmakers personal viewpoint as a pedestrian who often feels like an outsider in a world occupied by cars.

THE FIELD, New York City, as fiscal sponsor for DAELA/KIMBERLY BARTOSIK, received $7,200 in support of the development and production of a new evening-length project, The Materiality of Impermanence. Bartosik has been presenting choreographic work since 1999. Her choreographic interests are based, in part, on the relationship of architectural space to the architecture of the body. Her work is greatly influenced by literature and cinema. The title of her new work is taken from an article on Tacita Dean, whose 16mm films have been a creative inspiration to Bartosik. As the title suggests, the project looks at a complex architectural structurethe homewhose essence is an accumulation of shifting meanings created from the human dramas and material belongings of the occupants. The concept of home has been radically altered in this era of epic foreclosures, as it has become permeated with the constant threat of loss. Bartosiks interest is in the ramifications of ones deep attachment, over time, to the idea of ones living space and the ways in which traces of ones home are materially erased once the interior life and inhabiting bodies are removed.

MARY BILLYOU received a grant for GUN, HAT, an experimental film in five sections that the maker describes as a compendium of narrative film using only its iconic elements: a gun, a hat, low-key lighting, screams, and a sexy lady. Shot on black and white 16mm film, GUN, HAT recalls film noir and its surrounding fantasies of nostalgic return. Shot on location in New York City's Chinatown, The Bowery, Central Park, and Fifth Avenue, the film follows the close-up action of hands wielding guns and heads wearing Fedoras. Other sections of the film will focus on different soundtracks of screams and a sexy lady dressed in a sequined gown who stands on a bare stage in front of a large curtain. Lighting will be used to great effect in the film to not only recall the film noir aesthetic, but also in conjunction with the film's other elements, to illustrate the Godard directive that in order to make a film, all you need is a girl and a gun.

A grant was awarded to LISA BLACKSTONE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, in support of Grappling Girls, an intimate hour-long documentary about girls and women who defy preconceived notions and societal disapproval as they pursue the worlds oldest sport. One of the central characters in the film, a 13-year-old girl named Audra, readies herself for a major competition. Her skintight outfit is red. Her eyes are watchful. A man and a woman whisper advice in her ears. She bounces in anticipation of the battle ahead. What Audra is about to do is perfectly legal, not particularly well known, and often frowned upon by those who have encountered it. Audra is about to engage in a wrestling matchan old-fashioned, get-down-on-the-mat, competitive, mano a mano wrestling match. Audra is a grappling girla female wrestler. Grappling Girls is an intimate look into the thoughts and lives of Audra and other girls and women who pursue a passion for wrestling.

IAN CHENEY, was awarded support for The City Dark, a feature-length documentary about light pollution and the disappearance of the night. Posing the deceptively simple question-why do we need the night?-Cheney leads viewers on a quest to understand what is lost in the glare of city lights. Blending a humorous tone with majestic time-lapse footage of the night sky, Cheney creates what he calls an unprecedented portrait of our world after dusk, and a meditation on our relationship to the stars. It is a personal journey rooted in New York City, but bringing viewers as far afield as Shanghai, Paris, and Mauna Kea, The City Dark reveals how cancer studies, energy crises, and disrupted ecosystems are adding unprecedented urgency to astronomers' quest to darken our city lights.

EYEBEAM ATELIER, New York City, acting as fiscal sponsor for independent artist REID FARRINGTON, received $6,000 in support of the development and production of the new work Gin & It. Eyebeam is an art and technology center that supports the creation and presentation of art works produced with digital technologies and demonstrating new media as a significant genre of cultural production. It also addresses public appreciation of new media, researching and developing new technologies, and artists' access to digital tools. Farrington designs, directs, and produces new works that challenge stage convention and technique. His vision integrates image with live performance. The source material for Gin & It is Alfred Hitchcock's 1948 film Rope, based on the Leopold and Loeb murder, the story of two young men who murder a friend just for a thrill. Farrington will intersect Hitchcock's narrative rhythm with the choreography of the camera and film crew, to comment on Hitchcock's failed experiment.

CARTER GUNN & ROSS MCDONNELL were awarded a grant for Colony, a documentary that seeks to present an allegory of the state of the American nation through the voices of its commercial beekeepers. For the last two years, beekeepers have been battling the effects of the mysterious Colony Collapse Disorder, a disease that is wiping out massive numbers of honeybees, putting at risk over a third of the agricultural production of the United States and threatening a multibillion dollar industry. This film taps into many of the issues that are prevalent and pressing in our broader society, not just the world of the beekeeper. The environment, government, a future of uncertainty and a distrust of the other are all issues that unconsciously burden us. In a strange intertwining of the fate of man and insect, many of these issues are currently manifest in the plight of the American honeybee. Has this insect, selfless in its dedication to the colony above all else, prized by man for thousands of years, producer of what many say is the worlds only perfect food source, sounded some kind of alarm bell for humanity?

STEPHEN GUREWITZ, Golden Valley, Minnesota, was awarded a grant for Thanks Minnesota, a feature-length fictional narrative film about a father, divorced from his wife and estranged from his two grown sons, who spends his days alone in his familys deserted suburban home. After a doctors diagnosis that his cancer treatment is failing, he urgently plans a weekend camping trip with his sons. Without telling them about his condition, he attempts to resuscitate the father-to-son bond that he neglected in the past. The film explores themes of family, death and aging, as well as the courage necessary for a family to begin expressing intimacy and affection so late in life.

Directors authorized a grant of $8,820 to THE FIELD, New York City, acting as fiscal sponsor for MIGUEL GUTIERREZ & THE POWERFUL PEOPLE, to support the creation, development and production of the new evening-length work Misinterpreted (working title). Gutierrez has been producing work since 2001, and has received one previous grant from the Foundation. In Misinterpreted, Gutierrez will work with the idea of communication gone awry: the inadequacy, failure and mystery of language. By language, he means not only words but also organized patterns of communication that transmit coherent meaning, with structures as diverse as gesture, maps and architecture. The Field supports and sponsors the development, creation and presentation of musical, dance, theatrical, film and video works.

EMILY HADDAD, Stillwater, Minnesota, received a grant for a short experimental documentary titled Artist in the Margin, which explores the world of artist Pierre Prevost. It examines the questions: What impulse compels an artist to create, and Does an artist intend to affect his society and his environment? Haddad will explore how the special world created by Pierre Prevost demonstrates answers to these questions and how this modern artist can be related to prehistoric artists of the famous caves located in the same region of southern France where he lives. Haddad first entered the world of Pierre Prevost nine years ago. His home of Combarel (little hollow) is on several acres of forested land in the little-known region of Aveyron. Just a few miles away are the caves of Lascaux and Peche Merle, where prehistoric artists painted their environment and their imaginings, much like Prevost creates sculptures, drawings, paintings, and other forms of art from discarded objects he finds in junkyards and flea markets of surrounding villages. Haddad will examine his unique world, with an emphasis on its alignment with the similarly austere worlds of the cave artists of Lascaux and Peche Merle.

DARIN HEINIS was awarded support for Detachment, a narrative short about an Iraq War veteran who attempts to assimilate back into his prewar life, and his struggle with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Jack constantly revisits the horrors he witnessed in combat. He must confront those issues, and the dark shadow they cast on his life, in order to heal and finally realize that what happened in the past was not his fault. The story comes from a very personal place, as the filmmaker is a Gulf War veteran. Although he does not suffer from PTSD, he understands how the condition can be all consuming to those who do. Detachment is his attempt to tell the story of one mans struggle to conquer his war-related demons.

A grant was awarded to GABRIELA ILIJESKA for a narrative short titled Azra, a story about a young girl who longs for her family's old life in her home country as her parents attempt to forge a better life in America. The film will focus on Azra's perception of the new world, her rebellion against it, and her escapism into dreams where raspberries grow all year around, where her father is an astronaut, not an asbestos worker, and her mother is a beautiful queen, not a waitress. The film will use a visual style of storytelling, with little to no dialogue, blended with fantasy imagery that provides an important relief from the claustrophobic and cluttered reality in which the family lives.

MOLLY WORRE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, CARRIE VOLK, St. Paul, Minnesota, and CARRIE BUSH, Minneapolis, Minnesota, were awarded a grant for Golden Hour, a mixed media HD and 16mm narrative short about a man named Jim who wakes up to the gray world around him. He suffers from dementia and is desperate to remember his past. His memories are tangled together in filmstrips projected in the black box of his mind. He relies on his book of prompts and Post-It reminders to carry him through the daywithout them, simple tasks like remembering to turn off the stove and take his medication are completely forgotten. Jim wanders alone in life but chases the fragmented memory of a lost love. As the visions of this love are revealed, his memories begin to invade his realitysnow speckled streets are blurred with crashing waves and hot summer sand. Jim becomes consumed with unraveling the Golden Hour. Near the end of the film, as his fragmented memories come rushing back in full clarity, he realizes the missing memories stolen by dementia have been romanticized and are better left forgotten.

A grant was awarded to HOSSEIN KESHAVARZ for Dog Sweat, a narrative film about the schism between six young Iranians and their more conservative elders, in a country where over two-thirds of the population is under thirty. The film aspires to show the real Iran, a portrayal neither sanctioned by the government nor seen by the outside world. An Iran where young people drink alcohol, party, socialize with members of the opposite sex and cautiously allow themselves to be gay, all behind closed doors and blackened windows. The young actors in this fictional film, which was shot in Iran on HD video, put themselves at great risk to participate. The risk was worth taking in their view in order to tell the stories of this film.

LIVE ACTION SET, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $5,000 in support of the creation and production of My Fathers Bookshelf. Live Action Set creates ensemble-driven performances that dissolve artistic boundaries, elicit profound responses in audiences, and address issues of relevance to the contemporary world. My Fathers Bookshelf was originally conceived by artistic director Galen Treuer, one of the four members of the ensemble. The work explores Alzheimers Disease through multiple perspectives: the personal through a solo character suffering from the disease, the factual through a neuroscience lecture and PowerPoint presentation, and the community through a short play of scenes with a chorus of individuals who interact with the Alzheimers patient. Stories of science, memory and communication are at the core of My Fathers Bookshelf.

CRAIG MACNEILL received a grant for Henley, a narrative short about a ten-year-old boy named Ted Henley who lives with his father in their run down motel on a desolate stretch of road. He earns his tiny allowance by collecting and removing the road kill that litters the highway. But when the motel cash register starts to run dry, Ted decides to turn his attention to collecting bigger game. This film was inspired by Clay McLeod Chapman's Miss Corpus, which, according to Macneill, weaves together honest human emotion with peculiar and atypical situations.

JOHN MAGARY received support for Antoinette, a feature-length narrative about a womans unfinished battle with life, an ecstatic chronicle chasing its defiant subject across four decades as she raises seven kids amidst the pain, joy, death, and rebirth of the city she calls home. And where is her home? Its New Orleans, a place like no other, tumbling down the backside of Americas twentieth century. Scenes from Antoinettes life spill out in chronological disorder, in bursts short and long, with the random force of memorya history, a dance, a delirious harnessing. From her self-imposed name change at seven, to her first child at seventeen, to a disastrous brawl in the projects at twenty-nine, to her post-Katrina exile in San Antonio, Antoinette takes a hopscotch through time with ailing siblings, battered suitors, determined girls, belligerent boys, and one very tough woman.

MARLO PORAS received a grant for Untitled China Documentary (working title), a feature-length documentary about a spirited daughter of a rapidly disappearing matriarchal society, who is thrust into China's recent economic downturn when she loses the only job she's ever known. As she scours a hustling wholesale market in Beijing for affordable gifts to bring home to her family, 25-year old Jua Ma stretches $40 far beyond its imaginable value. Arms loaded with bags, she's nostalgic as she crowds onto the subway and heads to the tiny basement apartment she shares with nine of her co-workers. It's her last night in Beijing and she is still reeling from the recent closure of Madami, the ethnic minority themed bar where she's worked as a hostess and performer for the past four years. Beijing's fiercely competitive job market and rising cost of living have left her with only one option-to return home to her remote village in Yunnan Province, leaving the city for good. With her life savings of $360 safely tucked in her bra, Jua Ma sets off on a three-day train ride home. Untitled China Documentary is about her journey to this point in her life and beyond, where hopes surrounding the Olympics and other possibilities of new employment failed to materialize.

A grant was awarded to ROSEMARY SINDT, Minneapolis, Minnesota, in support of Love-Life, a film that is a poem, a love song, and an image journey to elucidate faith, hope, and connectedness. The characters in the film are Rosemary Sindt, the films director, producer, and poet laureate, who endeavors to recreate the images of her poems and the emotions of her life; and Chris Thomas, the cinematographer, editor, image voyager and experimental rule breaker. Love-Life is a tale of the quest for the sacred and spiritual that is available in the everyday; beauty waiting to be recognized, captured and kept. The film appears in broad strokes of watercolor. With her moviemaker eyes wide open, the filmmaker will explore the concept of love in the physical and ethereal world.