Past
Grantees

SHELLY SILVER, received funding for an experimental narrative called suicide, about a filmmaker who is contemplating suicide. Rejected by and rejecting her own country, she starts traveling aimlessly, camera in hand. What she did formerly as a profession she now does in desperation, filming everything and everyone in a last ditch effort to make a connection. Zig-zagging the globe, from New York to Osaka to Berlin to Mexico, as she increasingly loses touch with reality. Her filming becomes more searching, poignant and aggressive.

EVE SUSSMAN received funding for China/White - Scenes from an Exile, a panoramic film/video that will be shown as a gallery installation. It is about two principal characters, HER and HIM, who are caught in the turmoil of emotional, psychological and physical exile and take their dysfunctional communication to its erotic limit. Their condition is contrasted by the presence of LEAH, THE DOG, THE SOOTHSAYER and THE STRANGER, who foil the couple's unbearable existentialism.

REIKO TAHARA, was awarded a grant for Enmyoin, a documentary that will provide critical social analysis, from the filmmaker's point of view, of Sister Enmyoin, a 95-year-old Japanese female Buddhist priest who passed away in August 1999.

Funding was awarded to HANNAH WEYER, for La Escuela (School), a feature-length documentary that follows a Mexican-American migrant teenager over the course of her freshman year in high school.

FREE RANGE ARTS, New York City, acting as fiscal agent for WOOD DANCE, received $10,000 for the production of two works, Feeling Lilaand Funktionlust. Free Range Arts serves the performing arts community by making available low cost rehearsal space, facilitating the work of emerging performing artists and producing performance art events. Choreographer Ellis Wood has been based in New York City since 1989. Funding from the Jerome Foundation will enable Wood to create two new pieces, the first of four pieces of a suite of dances that will take a deeper and riskier approach than past endeavors, and bring her work to a new level of intensity. Feeling Lilais a trio about discovering the many layers that have grown over pure being, and stripping away the obstacles firmly planted in the way of reaching the purer states of lives. Funktionlustis a solo work for Wood, based on the German word meaning the pleasure of doing. It will deal with the concept of women and pleasure, as well as the successes and failures involved in attempting to move from an authentic place of joy.

GREG YOLEN, Minneapolis, MN. Yolen received support for Don Ciegna, a 35mm feature-film about former baseball great Sam Maddox and his attempts to escape the consequences of his bi-polar personality. Sam led a rollercoaster life. Good looking and athletic, he breezed through his childhood as the playground enforcer. During his youth he was the designated hitter on the school team, which led to his successful career on the baseball diamond. At the same time, however, dark visions began to creep into his consciousness. He found himself plunged from the heights of being on top to the depths of complete desperation. This film follows his tumultuous journey.

THE SOUTHERN THEATER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, presents alternative performance by artists working at the grassroots of the Twin Cities varied cultural, political and economic communities. It acted as fiscal agent for a proposal from choreographer Cathy Young, who has received support from the Foundation since 1997 for the development and production of new works. A two-year grant of $30,000 was authorized to support CATHY YOUNG DANCE. Young brings to her work an understanding of diverse kinds of movement including jazz, postmodern, improvisation, social dance and gymnastics. Her work is defined by its musicality, athleticism and classic choreographic structure. Jerome support will allow Young to develop three new projects over the course of the next two years. The first is Cabaret, which will focus on vernacular dance and music of the past four decades. The second will be the reworking of Night of Many Dreams, a piece that explores ideas of connection and isolation, constraint and freedom. A one-time additional grant of $10,000 was authorized for The Gospel Project, the working title of a collaborative piece involving Cathy Young; Robert "Eddie" Robinson, Director of the Twin Cities Community Gospel Choir; Mary Easter, writer, poet and Director of the Dance Department at Carleton College; and choreographer, director and performance artist Djola Branner. The seeds of this project are in the collaborators desire to explore racism, mistrust and separatism. Ultimately, The Gospel Project is about salvation, redemption, hope and inclusion.

THE SOUTHERN THEATER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, presents alternative performance by artists working at the grassroots of the Twin Cities varied cultural, political and economic communities. It acted as fiscal agent for a proposal from choreographer Cathy Young, who has received support from the Foundation since 1997 for the development and production of new works. A two-year grant of $30,000 was authorized to support CATHY YOUNG DANCE. Young brings to her work an understanding of diverse kinds of movement including jazz, postmodern, improvisation, social dance and gymnastics. Her work is defined by its musicality, athleticism and classic choreographic structure. Jerome support will allow Young to develop three new projects over the course of the next two years. The first is Cabaret, which will focus on vernacular dance and music of the past four decades. The second will be the reworking of Night of Many Dreams, a piece that explores ideas of connection and isolation, constraint and freedom. A one-time additional grant of $10,000 was authorized for The Gospel Project, the working title of a collaborative piece involving Cathy Young; Robert "Eddie" Robinson, Director of the Twin Cities Community Gospel Choir; Mary Easter, writer, poet and Director of the Dance Department at Carleton College; and choreographer, director and performance artist Djola Branner. The seeds of this project are in the collaborators desire to explore racism, mistrust and separatism. Ultimately, The Gospel Project is about salvation, redemption, hope and inclusion.

EMILY ABT and YORUBA RICHEN received support for Take It From Me, a documentary that follows the struggles of six women and their families as they fight to survive in response to drastic changes to the country's welfare system.

AYESHA ADU AND E. G. BAILEY, Minneapolis, MN, received a $10,000 grant in support of Cord, a feature-length narrative film based on Adu's relationship with her mother - a relationship in which she is manipulated into taking on the role of her father.

PEGGY AHWESH was awarded a grant for a feature-length narrative titled The Star Eaters, based on The Blue of Noon by Georges Bataille. Written in 1935, it tells the story of a man named Troppmann who seems divested of all emotion and social commitment. His relationships are banal, except with one woman for whom he develops an intense love too explosive to sustain.

A two-year grant of $37,000 was authorized to the SOUTHERN THEATER FOUNDATION, Minneapolis, Minnesota, as fiscal agent for dancer improviser CHRIS AIKEN DANCE, in general operating support and a special collaborative performance and teaching residency. Aiken will work in a September 1999 residency in Minneapolis with dancer Kirstie Simson and musicians Peter Hamilton, Peter Jones and Dean McGraw. The collaborators originally presented work together last year at Dance Theater Workshop in New York City, which received rave reviews. This grant will also support Aiken's next two season of improvisational work.

SHAWN ATKINS - Eyeball, an animated short film that traces the story of a girl who commits a brutal act and literally swallows the evidence. The story follows her as this secret becomes more and more internally disturbing to her, giving her nightmares. This causes her conscious mind to separate from her unconscious.

PHYLLIS BALDINO received a grant for Color without Color, an experimental documentary about Achromatopsia, a rare condition that prevents the eyes from seeing color.

LANA BERNBERG received a grant for Wake Me When It's Over, an experimental narrative that will be a lyrical and elusive story of Helen, a young woman spurned by her mother after revealing her lesbian longings, who plunges into the dark depths of depression.

NICHOLAS BLAIR received support for Coming of Age at the End of the World, a documentary about a 71-year-old Jewish grandmother who takes her granddaughter back to her homeland of Poland, where she faced incredible trauma during the war.

EVA ILONA BRZESKI was given support for Last Seen, a feature-length narrative film about the disappearance of a high school girl, who was last seen running in desperation around a school track in street clothes and bare feet.

MARTHA BURGESS was supported for Ignatz' Nose Travels in Still Life, an interactive CD-ROM that will consciously select a concealed aspect of our culture and tease out its meaning, desirability and use via everyday objects. It will contain a series of still life photographs within which animation, sound tracks, video clips, poems, jokes and interactive stories are associated and accessible.

Composer MARY ELLEN CHILDS, applying through the sponsorship of the SOUTHERN THEATER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a grant of $12,000 in support of artists' fees and other costs associated with a major entrepreneurial initiative designed to advance her work, forge a productive working relationship with a commercial cymbal company and underwrite a European tour for her company CRASH. Childs moves from the conception of musical scores through staging, working much like a stage director or choreographer for musical pieces that incorporate movement, theater and visual media. CRASH is the ensemble through which Childs develops and produces her visual percussion music.

LAURIE COLLYER received a grant for Nuyorican Dream, a feature-length, video documentary about the attempt of a young Latino man named Robert Torres to leave his comfortable life as a school teacher in California. He returns to the Brooklyn home of his childhood in order to help his troubled family.