Past
Grantees

LISELLE MEI was awarded a grant for Lower East Side Stories, a dramatic short presented in a series of four sequential portraits of women living in the Lower East Side of New York City. This film is designed to be a cultural homage to evoke color, culture and history of the neighborhood.

NEW YORK FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS, New York City, acting as fiscal agent for choreographer JENNIFER MONSON, received a grant of $11,000 in support of the Ducks and Geese Migration, a new work under the umbrella of the multi-year navigational dance project BIRD BRAIN. This project investigates migratory patterns and habits of birds and other animals and their biophysical and metaphorical relationship to humans as fellow travelers. The project encompasses five components: site-specific public dance presentations, panel discussions with artists and scientists, dance workshops for the general public, a website that tracks the migrating birds and dancers, and an educational resource guide currently in development. The Ducks and Geese Migration will navigate north from Texas along the Mississippi flyway through Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota and Southern Canada. In the spring of 2004, four dancers will present 30 site-specific events along the migration route, as well as conduct workshops and organize panel discussions.

MICHELLE MEHRI MOUSAVI, Minneapolis, MN, received support for My Life As A Terrorist, an experimental documentary that recounts the filmmakers experience growing up Iranian in the aftermath of the Iran Hostage Crisis. It explores two vastly different but historically intertwined narratives: the story of American hostage Robert C. Ode, who was held in the United States Embassy in Tehran, Iran, for 444 days; and the filmmakers experience as an Iranian-American child enrolled in American educational institutions for 10 years.

ALYSA J. NAHMIAS received funding to support Unfinished Spaces: Cubas Architecture of Revolution, a documentary exploring the Cuban Revolution through its most significant architectural achievementThe Cuban National Art Schools. It follows the lives of the three architects who designed the schools, Ricardo Porro, Vittorio Garatti, and Roberto Gottardi, providing visual encounters with their architecture. Their massive undertaking began with great energy; however, construction stopped in the mid-1960s. The architects have recently been invited to resume work to complete the building they began 40 years ago.

REYNOLD REYNOLDS received support for Soil, an installation and short film resulting in a poetic document of decline, decay, and deterioration a return of all that is mortal to the soil.

BEN RIESMAN, Minneapolis, MN, received a grant to support FLIGHT, a performance and video installation in which participants take part in a ritual that recalls NASA launches as well as religious practices, drawing linkages between religious and secular ritual experience.

RICHARD ROWLEY & JACQUELINE SOOHEN received a grant for The Fourth World War, an experimental film that weaves together intensely intimate footage from six conflictsin Argentina, Chiapis, Palestine, South Africa, Korea and the war on terror as it moves through New York, Afghanistan and Iraq. Its layered, polyphonic editing style reveals points of connection among communities coming to terms with the violent reorganization of every aspect of their lives and worlds.

LYNNE SACHS received support for Visit to a State of Unbelonging, a 70-minute cine-essay that explores the various ways we can know, confront and identify with another human being. Using a pastiche of both authentic and fabricated artifacts, the film reconstructs the lives of three peoplethe father of the director, a distant relative who fled post-World War II Europe for the countryside of Brazil, and an Israeli woman encountered in a newspaper article.

RUTH SERGEL received support for Belle, a short narrative fable of old age and beauty, which explores the intersection of age, race and family ties; celebrating the challenges of our imperfect humanity.

KIRK RAY SHANNON-BUTTS received a grant in support of blueprint, a feature-length narrative following college freshmen Ross, 17 and Malick, 19, who meet on the last day of their first year of college. Feeling liberated, Malick is set to roam off into the heat, the sun and fun of summer when he stumbles across the studious Ross, who is gearing up for a semester abroad (starting the very next morning). Before he begins his trip, Ross finds himself swept into Malicks carefree and adventurous world as they spend the day exploring New York City, each other and beyond. blueprint is a film about identity, intellect, attraction and self-discovery.

Funding was awarded to THERESE SHECHTER to support I Was a Teenage Feminist, a first-person journey into a movement that once sparked social revolution, yet now invokes indifference and disdain. In the hopes of reclaiming feminism as a tool for personal and political power, the filmmaker will explore the F-word from a variety of perspectives. The work is a one-hour digital video documentary and personal examination of one of the 20th centurys most important socio-political movements.

WILLIAM SLICHTER, Minneapolis, MN, was awarded a grant for Flourtown, an animated short that combines live action with animation, telling the story of corporate greed and the redemptive power of art. It focuses on two children of artists, who die in an accident stemming from the negligence of a group of industrialists who own a tornado factory. The story follows the lives of the artist couple as they recover from the tragedy.

LAURIE STERN & DAN LUKE, St. Paul, MN, received support for Carry it Forward, a documentary about the lives of Paul and Sheila Wellstone. It will explore the origin of Paul Wellstones politics, his controversial road to the Senate, his deep bond with his wife and co-Senator Sheila, and the legacy of a life of progressive populism.

The SOUTHERN THEATER FOUNDATION, Minneapolis, Minnesota, acting as fiscal agent for choreographer ROBIN STIEHM AND HER DANCING PEOPLE COMPANY, received $11,000 in support of the creation and development of new work. Stiehm is making a new abstract quintet set to the music of Brahms, titled Chance Makes Luck. Her second new work will be a trio for women set to the music of New York composer Annie Gosfield. Stiehm is also reworking an older piece titled In a Room, Gambling.

MARK STREET was awarded a grant for Rockaway, an experimental film about three teenage girls who stay up all night and wander city streets as a final celebration of their high school graduation. Through their conversations with denizens of the Rockaway section of Queens, New York, the viewer learns about the challenges they face as residents of a place torn between the allure of the city and the tenuous comfort of the suburbs.

SHASHWATI TALUKDAR was awarded a grant in support of Eunuch Alley, a Bollywood noir about journalists, gangsters, eunuchs, mothers and castration.

SARAH TEITLER received funding to support Habana (work title), a one-hour experimental video documentary about the city of Habana, Cuba. The project explores the space where art and anthropology meet. It grows out of questions concerning how to represent complex places and explore the reciprocal relationships between people and space.

THE SOUTHERN THEATER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, acting as fiscal agent for choreographer URI SANDS, received a conditional grant of $8,000 in support of the development and production of a concert of new work. Sands will create work that showcases and celebrates both the diversities and similarities of dance found in the Twin Cities area. Hell incorporate ballet, jazz, contemporary and break dance in three new works. The overarching concept is dance that addresses the body, mind and spirit.

Funding was awarded to JADE WU for In Search of Golden Phoenix: The Invisible Legacy, a documentary that begins with a personal tale about domestic abuse and expands into a global legacy of wartime abuse in correlation to the rise and definition of domestic abuse in Asian and Asian American culture.

MARCUS YOUNG, Minneapolis, MN, was awarded funding for Thoughts #1 & Thoughts #2, two experimental shorts that portray the filmmakers quiet reflections on his place in a society of cumulative violence and recent war. Amidst a myriad internal struggles, the filmmaker poses the personal inquiries of how to be a good personhow to be a working, multi-cultural, positively out, not-so-young, spirit-filled, contributing citizen-artist in an isolating society.