Past
Grantees

Nova Scott-James (she, her, hers) is a filmmaker, artist, and creative coach from Harlem, NYC. Her childhood experiences of being flooded with the sounds and culture of jazz have impacted her creative aesthetic greatly as her work honors improvisation, altered states of consciousness, ritual, and collaboration. Scott-James is also a reiki practitioner and dedicated intuitive worker—she uses these abilities to serve people as a director and creative coach by guiding them in honoring their creative genius.

Project Statement

Wild Darlings Sing The Blues (And it’s a Song of Freedom) is a feature-length documentary following the Wild Darlings, a queer healing arts collective of black women and non-binary activists, as they embark on an epic road trip from New York to a former slave plantation in Virginia. The Darlings are tasked with harnessing their “healer within” to bless the plantation land, honor their ancestors and explore their experiences of racial and gender-based violence. They create a performance art homage to The Blues.

Illya Szilak (she, her, hers) is a writer, artist, director, and creative producer. Shaped by her experiences as a physician, her richly collaborative, multidisciplinary art practice explores mortality, embodiment, identity and belief in an increasingly virtual world. Her longtime artistic partner is Cyril Tsiboulski (he, him, his). Their first virtual reality piece, Queerskins: a love story (2018), received a Peabody Futures of Media Award for transmedia. Their second, Queerskins: ARK, which features live dance performance was developed at The Venice Biennale College V.R. Lab. Their most recent work, In My Own Skin (2021), premiered at CPH:DOX festival. It combines handmade textiles, photography, wearable avatars, and virtual architecture. Szilak continues to work as a doctor, currently caring for inmates at Rikers Island, NYC.

Project Statement

Fly Angel Soul is a short experimental narrative film shot within virtual reality. It tells the story of Sebastian, a young gay physician estranged from his rural Catholic Missouri family, who, having moved to Mali to heal the sick, is diagnosed with AIDS. Inspired by a quote from Meister Eckhart “(let us) rejoice in the everlasting truth in which the highest angel and the soul and the fly are equal,” Fly Angel Soul is shot in real-time, from the unique points of view of three networked virtual cameras adopting the “roles” of the eponymous characters. The “human” p.o.v. will be that of a live cinematographer moving through the virtual set. Thus, in Fly Angel Soul, “liveness” resides in the “embodied” cameras even more so than in the actors in the story. Finding commonality with video games and live performance, Fly Angel Soul explores the potential for virtual production techniques to expand 2-D cinematic language.

Jingjing Tian (she, her, hers) is a Chinese American filmmaker based in NYC. Born in Northeast China, she immigrated to Texas at the age of nine, where she learned to speak with a twang, wore a belt buckle, and discovered her Asian American identity. Tian explores these identities and the themes of autonomy and oppression in her work and her life. Writing and directing are therapy for her. A Sundance Uprise Grantee, she is working on her first feature film, Kid C. Her short films have been screened at Nitehawk Cinema with MoMA, Cleveland International Film Festival, Bentonville Film Festival, Seattle Asian American Film Festival, and Museum of the Chinese in America. Her work has been profiled in Paper Magazine, AM New York, BuzzFeed, High Country News, South China Morning Post, and more.

Project Statement

A character and emotionally driven film, Kid C is a narrative feature that follows Lee during her first year as a Chinese immigrant in a small town in Texas during the late 1990s. Cracking under the pressures of volatile parents, Lee, a rambunctious 10-year-old, attempts to reclaim a sense of childhood with her best friend John, an African American boy. But when she accidentally reveals a secret that he shares, their friendship is threatened and life begins to collapse. Drawing from field research and personal experiences, Kid C explores a child’s agency in the face of parental abuse and intergenerational trauma.

Taryn Ward (he, him, his) is a filmmaker and writer currently working and living in Brooklyn, New York. His often deadpan-centric narrative-based filmmaking tends to revolve around the quotidian and the idiosyncrasies of the everyday layabout. Ward’s films have been screened in the Fast Forward Film Festival, NewFilmmakers at Anthology Film Archives and Atlanta Film Festival.

Project Statement

Ward’s upcoming comedic film Broken Goods follows the story of an aloof man named Vincent who, in addition to struggling with a sugar addiction, becomes a full-time test subject for clinical drug and product test trials in lieu of working a steady nine to five. Despite the risk, there’s a small fortune to be made when donating one’s body to experimental research—and instead of working more hours at his retail position, Vincent finds this risk worth the reward. Driven mostly by its satirical tone and existential character study, Broken Goods also underscores the relationship between mind and self as well as one’s relationship to both state and labor.

Deacon Warner (he, him, his) is a documentary filmmaker and youth media instructor. In 2020 he joined the COMPAS roster of teaching artists. Warner has made numerous short documentaries, including Bee-Sharp Honeybee, 56, and Peaceful Warriors: on the road with Vets for Peace. The Co-op Wars, his first feature film, premiered in May 2021. In addition to his independent film work and teaching, Warner was the Youth Programs Director at FilmNorth for twelve years, developing the media program to include in-school residencies, summer camps, and after-school programming. Before working at FilmNorth, he was a social studies teacher in the Minneapolis Public Schools.

Project Statement

Rethinking Security is a documentary film about a community creating a nonviolent model for safety. With the guidance and expertise of Nonviolent Peaceforce (N.P.), community groups and social justice organizations in the Twin Cities are actively creating a force of community members trained in nonviolent strategies to provide community protection. This effort was set off by the protests and conflicts following George Floyd’s murder amidst a global pandemic. N.P. and local partners in the Twin Cities are developing trained volunteers and a communication system allowing rapid responses when violent situations emerge. This film will use verité style footage, following the efforts of the lead organizers, along with news reportage as context for events. Rethinking Security offers a look at a possible future where mutual protection and nonviolence replace our current model of armed protection.

Shen Xin (she, her, hers; they, them, theirs) creates moving image installations and performances that empower alternative histories, relations and potentials between individuals and nation-states. They seek to create affirmative spaces of belonging that embrace polyphonic narratives and identities. Shen Xin’s most recent solo presentations include Swiss Institute, New York (forthcoming 2022) and Brine Lake (A New Body) (Walker Art Center, 2021). Their recent group exhibitions include Language is a River (Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA), Melbourne, 2021), Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning (Gwangju Biennale, 2021), Sigg Prize (M+ Museum, Hong Kong, 2019), and Songs for Sabotage (New Museum Triennial, New York, 2018). They received the BALTIC Artists’ Award (2017) and the Rijksakademie residency in Amsterdam (2018-19).

Project Statement

A relational film, Solar Wheels of the Steppes (working title), presents a science fiction narrative of wild horses in North America/Turtle Island and Xinjiang, China. The horses’ relationships with technologies, ecosystems, humans, and land reveal sustainable interrelationships between culture and ecology across geography.

Rhiana Yazzie (she, her, hers) is a director, filmmaker, and the Artistic Director of New Native Theatre. Her first feature film, A Winter Love (writer/director/producer/actor), will premiere at festivals in 2021/22. Yazzie is a 2021 Lanford Wilson and 2020 Steinberg Award-winning playwright. She was a 2018 Bush Foundation Leadership Fellow and was recognized with a 2017 Sally Ordway Award for Vision. A Navajo Nation citizen, her work has been presented from Alaska to Mexico, including Carnegie Hall’s collaboration with American Indian Community House and The Eagle Project. She is a graduate of the University of Southern California’s Masters of Professional Writing, where she produced events featuring Stephen Hawking, Madeleine Albright, Paula Vogel, Herbie Hancock, and Spalding Gray.

Project Statement

Grant funds will begin the production process of Yazzie’s second feature film, Wounspe Wankatya: A College Education. Co-adapted from a play of the same name by Alex Hesbrook Ramier, it is the story of two Lakota women, Tiffany and Tashina, the only two from their reservation high school to make it into college. Tiffany is a math and physics genius who sabotages her gifts by partying too much, while Tashina is indigi-genius at being true to her Lakota traditions when she isn’t suffering from depression. To get an education, they embark on the creation of a sacred dress that will bring the enlightenment they need to get through school.

Kiera Faber received $21,540 for The Garden Sees Fire, an enigmatic animated narrative exploring the untamed wildness of the mind, the land, and the burning desire to besiege and control both. Inspired by the frontier writings of Conrad Richter and her family’s hereditary struggle with bipolar disorder, the imagery interweaves three distinct visual strands: puppet stop motion and drawing animation, hand-manipulated 16mm film, and an intermediary space that conjoins the external real-world imagery with the internal constructed world of the animations. This film is Faber’s second installment in a trilogy exploring mental pathologies and loosely inspired by specific literary works.

Jessica Beshir received $30,000 for Faya Dayi, a visual meditation on the unprecedented growth of Ethiopia’s khat industry. Khat, a mild narcotic leaf that induces fantasy, has become one of Ethiopia’s most lucrative cash crops due to the massive unemployment of the youth. Beshir’s film weaves footage of the Khat trade with a series of intimate portraits of Oromo khat farmers and urban youth exploring the boundaries between fiction and real-life in this powerful visual and sonic experience.

Shirley Bruno received $30,000 for Just-Come/Been-To, a triptych narrative exploring intimate spaces of women, their inherited land conflicts, and buried family legacy. Three stories unearth an interwoven tapestry in Haiti: a dream-well of collective memory reflecting on one’s spiritual connection to a land, its primitive memories, and the Caribbean dilemma of exodus and return. Drawing on her own Haitian heritage, Bruno explores philosophies, aesthetics, and rhythms of lived moments found distinctively in the Caribbean, particularly as it pertains to the lives of women. Her intimate and participatory approach recreates modern myths that expose the spaces between the physical and spiritual world.

Arisleyda Dilone received $30,000 for This Body, Too/Y Este Cuerpo Tambien. In this personal documentary, Dilone is faced with the decision to replace her expired breast implants or have them removed. She grapples with the concepts of femininity and gender norms as a Dominican immigrant intersex-woman. She simultaneously deconstructs her body and the multiple cultures and class perspectives that impose their values on her being. As a Latinx filmmaker, the intersections she inhabits resonate with both a queer and non-queer Latinx audience.

Charlotte Glynn received $30,000 for The Gymnast. A 14-year-old aspiring Olympic gymnast, Monica, and her single father, “gym dad,” fight to reinvent themselves after a potentially career-ending injury. Set in early 1990’s Pittsburgh, this feature-length narrative explores issues of sexual consent, cycles of mistreatment and the everyday struggles of poor working class families. Using her own experiences, Glynn brings nuance and compassion to the film, highlighting Monica’s attempts to make sense of her incredibly complicated father and her own struggle to find out who she really is.

Jon-Sesrie Goff received $30,000 for After Sherman, a film exploring coastal South Carolina as a site of cultural pride and racial trauma. Goff’s documentary looks at the layered socio-political implications of the Mother Emanuel Church slayings in Charleston, where his father was interim pastor. Goff’s relationship with his father is the focal point for intergenerational questions of Black American spiritual survival. This personal film grapples with how a new generation in the South approaches forgiveness, faith and healing in facing this repeated and painful history.

Alison Guessou received $30,000 for Happily Married After, a short satirical film that takes on the perfections and imperfections of marriage and individual versus societal expectations. A young couple has been selected by a documentary crew to be followed for a few weeks and interviewed as part of a series for what makes a marriage successful. Both partners (unbeknown to the other) overcompensate for the perceived shortcomings of the other until the hidden flaws are exposed. The couple finds themselves in a situation that can either make their marriage stronger or pull it apart. Through a series of flashbacks, character dialogue, and talking-head interviews, we see how they navigate for the sake of their relationship.

Haisi Hu received $30,000 for The Garden of Earthly Delight, a fifteen-minute claymation and hand-drawn animated film about a woman addicted to virtual reality sex. When her waking life and dream life begin to overlap, she recognizes the danger she is in and the threat this technology poses to society at large. Tackling a taboo subject matter, Hu investigates new roles in a post-feminist society, looking at how the advancement of technology can better serve female needs, instead of putting women back into a conformist box of isolation.

Chithra Jeyaram received $30,000 for Our Daughters (working title), a transracial open adoption story that flips the narrative. A single white mother makes a bold departure from the norm and chooses an Indian American couple to be her twin daughters’ adoptive parents. Drawn to stories at the intersection of race, religion, immigration, and family, Jeyaram’s documentary provides an immigrant’s perspective on interracial adoption while examining the development of cultural dexterity in familial settings.

Shalini Kantayya received $30,000 for Code for Bias (working title). Merging cinema vérité and sci-fi elements, the film captures MIT researcher Joy Buolamwini’s startling discovery that most facial recognition software does not accurately see dark-skinned faces. Through Joy’s journey to push for the first-ever legislation in the U.S. to govern this technology, Code for Bias sheds light on the threat artificial intelligence poses to civil rights and democracy.

Catherine Licata received $23,360 for The Lobby (working title), a narrative short film about Josefina, a hotel housekeeper determined to improve her life with the aid of her favorite self-help audiobook. A cinematic response to the performative “hustle” of late capitalist America, Licata entwines the issues of economic and class mobility with the contemporary immigrant experience.  This short character-driven drama deals with structural inequalities beyond any one person’s control, playing with audience expectations on class and societal roles.

Keith McQuirter received $30,000 for The 3,000 Project (working title), a documentary film exploring how Wisconsin, one of the states with highest rates of incarceration in America, abolished parole and changed the fate of 3,000 parole-eligible inmates in its prison system. The film shares personal stories of the impact parole laws and delves further into the state’s heated debates over solutions to reduce its massive inmate population.