Past
Grantees

SUSAN MARKS received support for Our Wildest Dreams: A True Crime Documentary of Dolls and Murder, an intimate look at dolls that are used to solve crimes, the woman who created them, our collective fascination with forensics, and the stories we like to tell ourselves about death. This film will be very unpredictable, even quirky, humorous and shocking as it challenges viewers through its revealing examinations of our odd relationship with death, our own mortality, our need for mythical death storytelling (i.e. crime television) and the reality that murderers usually know their victims.

MITCH MCCABE received a grant for Youth Knows No Pain, a feature-length documentary about the fear of aging and one filmmaker's comical journey through America's anti-aging industry, all set against the backdrop of her father's plastic surgery practice. Traveling across America and visiting everyone from doctors to celebrities, scientists, Star Magazine editors and a cross-section of real life characters who have gone to crazy lengths to beat the clock, Youth Knows No Pain creates a tableau of the aging hysteria. As the film sheds light on both the absurdity and the biological foundation of this obsession, it entertains as it dispels myths, exposes dark truths, and confirms that one thing is for sure-the aging obsession has become a national obsession.

THE FIELD, New York City, as fiscal sponsor for choreographer SARAH MICHELSON, received a two-year grant of $20,000 in support of the creation of a new work, Plain (working title), to be premiered in 2008 and presented in Wales the following year. Plain is a musical that imitates the aesthetic of cartoon. It is Michelson's aim to sustain a collaborative laboratory for the rigorous investigation of new dance/art ideas, processes and forms. She makes works that challenge current discourses on dance.

The AMERICAN COMPOSERS FORUM, St. Paul, Minnesota, as fiscal sponsor for composer ANN MILLIKAN, received $12,000 in support of a recording of Millikan's orchestral compositions by the Bulgarian Orchestra and in cooperation with Innova. Millikan will explore orchestration in depth and further enrich and promote herself as an orchestral composer. Having a recording of her orchestral music will give her an important tool for encouraging new performances and commissions. The recording will include three new compositions scored for full orchestra. Innova released the CD in 2010.

Support was awarded to MOON MOLSON for MEADOWLANDZ, a narrative short about a crew of four black street kids who find a drunken African passed out in the hallway of their tenement building. When it is revealed that the drunk is actually the father of Marquis, one of the four teens in the crew, the young men find themselves on a rag-tag journey through the urban darkness in search of a place for the unconscious man to sleep. As the night dwindles on, tensions flare and a final explosion of street codes, machismo and youthful pride threaten to make the place they find for the drunken man to sleep, the bottom of a swamp between New York City and New Jersey-the murky, reed-clotted depths of The Meadows. Although MEADOWLANDZ is a hip-hop neo-noir, instead of glorifying the street culture of violence and misogyny typical of this urban youth culture, the film indicts it as a dangerous code of conduct found in terminal machismo values. The film is a parable on the dangers of peer pressure and humiliation.

JILA NIKPAY received support for In Waiting, a short eight-minute 16mm experimental film exploring, from an intimate perspective, issues of dislocation. This autobiographical project follows Nikpay's desire to understand and discover the language of nomadic existence, the phenomena of moving between cultures. For inspiration, Nikpay draws upon fairy tales, poetry, political tract, and her own personal history living in self-imposed exile. In Waiting will be formally arranged, celebrating the female body and enticing the viewer to take pleasure in its sensuality. The presence of a female voice will contribute a subconscious counterpoint, portraying a deep desire for belonging, rooted in memory.

Support was awarded to RAMON ALBERTO NUEZ for Concrete Jungles: The True Story of Street Kids in America, a feature-length documentary that looks at the unsettling story of street kids (homeless, runaway, at-risk and outcast) in America. It will examine the invisibility in a largely apathetic society. It will also look at youth outreach programs, what they do, their importance to kids in need, and their struggles to remain operational in a sharply reduced funding environment. Nuez will employ stylistically unusual production elements to make his film both appealing and relevant to the very youth it examines.

INTERMEDIA ARTS, Minneapolis, Minnesota, as fiscal sponsor for choreographer MARGO ABDO O'DELL, received $10,000 in support of the creation and production of the new work Collateral Damage. Intermedia Arts is a multidisciplinary art center whose mission is to build understanding among people through art. It selectively acts as fiscal sponsor for individual artists and their ensembles/companies. Collateral Damage is a three-woman, one-hour, multimedia theatrical presentation that highlights the plight of real women who, because of war or civil strife, face challenges that test their physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual well-being.

Support was awarded to IAN OLDS for Watch it Burn, an hour-long documentary that follows Christian Parenti of The Nation magazine as he pursues a story on the state of Afghanistan five years after September 11th. What emerges is an intimate how the sausage gets made look at journalism in a war zone and, more importantly, a portrait of everyday Afghans trying to cope with the aftermath of America's forgotten war.

RACHEL PERKOFF was awarded a grant for a feature-length documentary called Another Lost Angel. On June 26, 1980, Kat Perkoff, the sister of the filmmaker, died in a white Mercedes after it veered off a highway, hit a concrete bridge support and split cleanly in half. Kat's high-drama, high-impact death was in some way an inexorable conclusion to a life lived with voracious and feverish intensity. In her brief 23 years, Kat Perkoff inhabited many personae: runaway, drug smuggler, gay bar manager, writer, local icon, and key player in the murky underworld of the New Orleans lesbian mafia-a demimonde populated by pimps, prostitutes and corrupt cops. Even for the fast lane of the French Quarter in the early 1970's, Kat's life hurtled along at several times the average speed. Another Lost Angel explores Kat's poetic life and violent death. The official report of the New Orleans Police Department states that Kat's death was caused by accidental collision. But rumors at the time pointed to a hit, mafia score, and a police cover-up. The filmmaker's quest to remember and reconstruct has become the catalyst for a broader meditation on collective memory, amnesia, fate and biography.

RAGAMALA MUSIC AND DANCE THEATER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, as fiscal sponsor for choreographer APARNA RAMASWAMY, received $10,000 in support of the development and production of two new dance works, Yathra (Journey) and Sva (Vital Force). Yathra explores the intricacies of the human journey from the dawn of birth to the twilight of life, tracing the physical and emotional passage of a soul through the phases of life. Sva is a collaboration between Aparna Ramaswamy and Nagano, a Japanese Taiko ensemble. Sva will explore rhythm and movement through the cultural and philosophical kinships between the Bharatanatyam style of dance and Taiko.

DAVE RYAN received a grant for The Hungering Deep, an experimental animated video that explores the foundations of self in the murky mixture of memory, subconscious realms of longing, and the physical realms of neural signals. As science peers deeper into the mechanics of our physical brains, the mystery of that mixture, and of the self inside it, grow ever more potent to the contemporary imagination. The primary metaphor for The Hungering Deep is an ocean at the very roots of the nervous system-the imaginary shore of the synapse. This metaphor establishes three levels: memory, subconscious and neural signal-each represented as distinctly different chapters in the film. The Hungering Deep brings video and film footage into a 3D environment, and applies texture mapping to create animated moving landscapes.

THE FIELD, New York City, as fiscal sponsor for artist ERIK SANKO, received $8,000 to produce the new work Dear Mme.,. Sanko is a musician and visual/performance artist best known in the downtown music scene. After secretly making marionettes for 15 years, with a small grant from Henson Foundation and a HERE Arts Center HARP residency, he created his first marionette play, The Fortune Teller, in 2006. Jerome funding will assist in the creation of the new work Dear Mme.,, which has been commissioned by the Kronos Quartet to be premiered during its performance series in the Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Dear Mme., is the story of a writer who continually endeavors to rewrite his life story, taking the role of the heroic protagonist in a series of short stories in which he tries to win the affections of a woman. He fails until he finally learns that it is simplicity and pureness that ultimately win her.

THE SOUTHERN THEATER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, as fiscal sponsor for artist KAREN SHERMAN, received $12,000 in support of the creation, development and production of copperhead, a new work to be produced in the fall/winter of 2008. The Southern Theater cultivates artistic exploration by providing a vibrant home for performance, fostering a multiplicity of voices, and catalyzing connections among artists and audiences. Karen Sherman is a choreographer and performance artist whose work is known for its commentary, both humorous and dark, on the human emotional landscape. copperhead explores violence and the relationship among victim, aggressor and place. Excerpts of performance material for copperhead will be workshopped before the 2008 premiere.

GABRIELLA SPIERER received funding toward the production of Raising Inmate 3851, a documentary that takes a look at the practice of prosecuting children as adults in the United States, a phenomenon that has put thousands of children behind bars with adult criminals. It unfolds in segments, using personal stories to illustrate different aspects of the problem. The idea of the film is to offer glimpses into the lives of children who committed crimes, their parents and the authorities, in order to raise questions about and provide perspectives on the real consequences of judicial and legislative policies.

RAY TINTORI received a grant for Glory at Sea!, a narrative short that takes place in 2008 New Orleans after another Katrina-like storm. The story's hero, Jake, and his girlfriend Tess sink into the clutches of Hell-not a fiery inferno, but an expanse of condemned souls planted like cornstalks at the bottom of the ocean. As Tess sinks into the sand, Jake is suddenly spat back up toward the surface. He emerges from the water, half alive, and finds himself in a mangled, dystopic American landscape. He begins constructing a raft out of the rubble of the city, planning on going to sea alone to rescue Tess. As he builds, survivors who also have loved ones lost in the underwater Hades begin to emerge from the bombed-out wasteland. Defying a clergy that declares Jake a pariah and his mission an affront to God's will, a community of fierce and devastated people join him in his epic task, seemingly doomed to failure. Jake's raft slowly transforms from a mere vehicle into a sprawling shrine of memorials and sentiments dedicated to the victims lost beneath the water. Driven by longing, desire, and their refusal to accept the idea that their loved ones were meant to die, they set sail to stage a veritable prison break from death itself. Glory at Sea! Is a film about love, loss, and hope, built from the rubble that still blankets every corner of New Orleans.

TU DANCE, St. Paul, Minnesota, received $12,000 to support the creation and production of new works in 2007. Founded by Co-Artistic Directors Uri Sands and Toni Pierce-Sands, the mission of TU Dance is to create, produce and deliver dance performances that excite diverse audiences. This commitment by the Jerome Foundation marks the fifth year of support.

LUCI WESTPHAL was awarded support for All's Well and Fair, an hour-long documentary that gives a unique perspective on growth and identity, choice and consequence, through portraying three punk rock mothers and their children over a ten-year interval of life on the fringes of society. Giving voice to the three mothers as well as to their five children, All's Well and Fair questions the stereotypes of welfare moms and alternative culture. It also examines the pitfalls of capitalism and mass market culture and living on the cusp of poverty. Do these women lead lives of integrity outside of the mainstream system, or have they just subjected themselves and their children to living in poverty and feeding off the system? And did they actually have a choice? The documentary ultimately focuses on the idea of knowing and being yourself.

ARTS AT ST. ANN'S, Brooklyn, New York, as fiscal sponsor for the ensemble ACCINOSCO (Jim Findlay, Cynthia Hopkins and Jeff Sugg), received $9,000 in support of the creation and production of Must Don't Whip 'Um. Accinosco is a newly formed live performance company. This collective of performing artists and designers is dedicated to creating original works that meld music, text, video and technical design with unbelievable fact and outrageous fiction. Must Don't Whip 'Um is about the unresolvable conflict between the human desire for spiritual fulfillment and the human necessity for a practical means of survival, through the lens of a fictional artist who has made a Rimbaudesque decision to extract herself from the realm of art. The work will be performed live as a concert with prerecorded documentary footage interwoven and projected onto screens.

A grant of $9,000 was awarded to PANGEA WORLD THEATER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, as fiscal sponsor for ANANYA DANCE THEATRE, in support of the creation of new work for a 2006 concert season. Pangea World Theater is committed to international works, styles and traditions that illuminate the human condition, end divisiveness, and celebrate differences. Ananya Dance Theatre, under the direction of choreographer Ananya Chatterjea, is a performing company of women artists of color who create theater and dance to stir thoughts, raise questions and inspire social change. Chatterjea brings together sculptural forms, strong footwork, emotional articulation of the Odissi classical style of dance, yoga, the energy of street theater and issue-based work in social justice and women's lives. Chatterjea is working on a new piece titled Duurbaar: Journeys into horizon, inspired by the relentless striving of women around the world to keep going, to realize a horizon where there is none visible, to create light when all seems dark. Duurbaar means unstoppable in Bengali; it is also the name of an organization created and led by sex workers in Kolkata, India.