Past
Grantees

The Kitchen, New York City, as fiscal sponsor for Jen Rosenblit, Brooklyn, New York, received $12,000 in support of the development and production of Swivel Spot in 2017.

Till Schauder, New York City, received $15,000 to support the production of the feature-length (90-minute) narrative film When God Sleeps, that depicts the true story of Iranian musician Shahin Najafi, who is forced into hiding after hardline clerics offer a $100,000 reward for his murder.

Norah Shapiro, Minnesota, received $30,000 to support Time for Ilhan (working title), a documentary telling the story of rising political star Ilhan Omar, a liberal, Hijab-wearing Somali-American immigrant mother of 3. She battles a white female 43–year incumbent as well as a male Somali contender for a hotly contested seat in the Minnesota State Legislature to become the first Muslim African-Immigrant woman elected to state office in the United States.

Fern Silva, New York City, received $25,000 in support of Rock Bottom Riser, an experimental film based around the world’s most active volcano, Kilauea. As lava continues to flow from the earth’s core on the island of Hawaii–posing an imminent danger–an existential crisis mounts for native Hawaiians: astronomers plan to build the world’s largest telescope on the burial grounds of their most sacred and revered ancestors.

Miguel Silveira, New York City, received $20,000 to support the production of American Thief, a feature-length (90-minute) narrative that follows Toncruz, a green-eyed African American teenager and master hacker, as he searches for reparation for what’s been done to his family.

Sonejuhi Sinha, New York City, received $15,000 in support of Stray Dolls, a suspenseful drama about a young South Asian woman, Riz, who enters America illegally, desperate to start her life over. In order to survive she starts working at a middle of the road motel in New Jersey, where the lives of immigrant women, drug dealers and loan sharks collide.

Springboard for the Arts, as fiscal sponsor for SuperGroup, received $12,500 to support the development and production of HOT LIQUID CONTAINERS.

KIRSTEN TAN was awarded $25,000 in support of the narrative project POP AYE. On a chance encounter, a disenchanted architect bumps into his long-lost elephant on the streets of Bangkok. Excited, he takes his elephant on a redemptive journey across Thailand, in search of the farm where they grew up together–only to discover the truth about himself and the life he callously left behind.

Penumbra Theatre Company, as fiscal sponsor for Imani Uzuri and Zakiyyah Alexander, received $20,000 to support the creation and production of GIRL Shakes Loose Her Skin.

Joshua Z. Weinstein, New York City, received $30,000 to support the production of the feature-length narrative Menashe, shooting all in Yiddish with Jewish actors on location in Hasidic Brooklyn.Deep in the heart of New York’s ultra-orthodox Hasidic Jewish community, Menashe, a kind, hapless grocery store clerk, struggles to make ends meet and responsibly parent his young son, Rieven, following his wife Leah’s death. Tradition prohibits Menashe from raising his son alone, so Rieven’s strict uncle adopts him, leaving Menashe heartbroken. Meanwhile, though Menashe seems to bungle every challenge in his path, his rabbi grants him one special week with Rieven before Leah’s memorial. It’s his chance to prove himself a suitable man of faith and fatherhood, and restore respect among his doubters.

Brooklyn Arts Exchange, as fiscal sponsor for Ni'Ja Whitson, received $12,000 to support the development and production of A Mediation on Tongues.

Rosemary Williams, Minnesota, received $13,000 to support MXC: The Invention of Tomorrow, a 10-episode web series that will tell a narrative story based on the failed 1970s utopian project, Minnesota Experimental City (MXC). This fictional narrative series imagines that the utopian city was built.

Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX), Brooklyn, New York, as fiscal sponsor for 600 HIGHWAYMEN, Brooklyn, New York, received $10,000 in support of the development and production of a new work, The Fever. BAX provides a nurturing and year-round performance, rehearsal, and educational venue that encourages artistic risk-taking and stimulates dialogue among diverse constituencies. Formed in 2009, 600 HIGHWAYMEN operates under the direction of Abigail Browde and Michael Silverstone. They create expansive performances that illuminate the inherent poignancy and theatricality of people together. The Fever, scheduled to premiere in January 2016, sets up communities that meet as strangers, and grow into and out of each other as the work unfolds. The work is about how an audience and performers come together and fall apart, and how meaning is defined in relation to each of these groups. The piece will be built with three multi-generational performing teams.

luciana achugar, (achugar, inc.), Brooklyn, New York, received a two-year grant of $32,000 in support of the production of a new dance piece, An Epilogue for OTRO TEATRO: True Love, and the development of a new untitled work. An Epilogue for OTRO TEATRO: True Love is a deepening of achugar’s investigation of the possibility for another kind of theater, a theater that gives voice to our bodies’ arcane spirit, instinct, and desire. The environment for this piece will take place in a theater in ruins, as if there has been a war or some kind of disaster. The performance is a means to metaphorically re-build the theater and community. In addition to the premiere of An Epilogue, achugar is developing a new work to be performed in public, non-theatrical spaces. The mission of luciana achugar is to create a visceral understanding of dance in which experience, connection, and compassion are given value as true sources of meaning.

CECILIA ALDORONDO received support for Memories of a Penitent Heart, a feature-length (80-minute) documentary in which Aldarondo cracks open a Pandora’s box of unresolved family drama surrounding the death of her uncle Miguel, who died 25 years earlier from AIDS.  Like any good detective story, Memories of a Penitent Heart began with two things: a mystery and a clue. The mystery was Miguel’s death; the clue was a shoebox of 8mm home movies decaying in Aldorondo's mother’s garage. Although these home movies documented cheery moments like birthdays and vacations, they also prompted Aldorondo’s investigation into a darker period in her family’s history: Miguel’s deathbed conflict with his mother, and what had become of Robert, the lover Miguel left behind. This compelling film examines those issues and more.

BRIAN ALFRED received support for Chromacity, a 6-minute experimental animation exploring color in the landscape.  Through recent reading and studying of color, Alfred became interested in the idea of creating an animation that explores an experimental use of color within our environment. In using photographic images that he has been taking during recent trips to Japan and along the East Coast of the U.S. as a starting point, he strives to create an animation that explores the way we experience color in the places we are surrounded by. In his animations, he creates digital drawings (usually from his own photographs) which he then puts into motion. He thinks of the animations as moving paintings. They sometimes have a loose narrative, but usually are just scenes of our environment. In making this film he will also collaborate with musicians to create experimental soundtracks to accompany the moving images he creates.

NORTHERN LIGHTS.MN, Minneapolis, Minnesota, as fiscal sponsor for ANICCHA ARTS, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a grant of $16,000 in support of the development and production of Census. The mission of Northern Lights.MN is to support emerging and established artists in the creation and presentation of art in the public sphere, focusing on innovative uses of technology, old and new, to imagine new interactions between audience, artwork and place; explore expanded possibilities for civic engagement; and encourage pluralistic community. Aniccha Arts (2004-present) is an experimental arts group that creates immersive performance environments using an interdisciplinary voice primarily made of dance and electronic media. This company of designers and dance collaborators construct worlds that question individual agency inside the systems in which we live.

NICOLE ANTEBI received support for Fred’s Rainbow Bar and Other Stages on the International Border (working title). The topographical film essay uses a variety of animation styles along with live action and archival imagery to interrogate histories, memories, and imaginings of the border landscapes of El Paso, TX and Ciudad Juárez, MX, the region where Antebi grew up. The film is mostly set in the early 90’s or the era before NAFTA and before the erection of the Border Security Fence with flashbacks to the Battle of Juárez and flashes forwards to contemporary events, like the razing of the ASARCO smelter. The International Border (or the river with two names) remains the mainframe through which events unfold as we observe teens navigate these disparate landscapes.

NOBUYUKI ASAI received support for a feature-length (90-minute) experimental film, Diary of Rooftop Water Towers. This film will be a harmonic cinepoem depicting the changing phases of New York water towers as they evolve through the seasons from the cradle to the grave, and their mutability as compared to that of daily human lives. Using 35mm black and white film stock, Asai filmed approximately 150 static shots of rooftop water towers. Each shot will be separated by a brief interval of black leader, which will invoke the perception of the entire film seeming like a Japanese "Haiku","Noh" or "Zen" rather than a city symphony. New York City has considerable diversity through its multitude of races, languages, classes and religions. Many stories occur amidst this vast range of people every day. On the rooftops, however, their emotional voices are not heard. Instead, ambient sound, distant noises from the subway, traffic and construction projects, airplanes, birds, wind, rain and thunder are heard. The sounds heard by water towers closely resemble the daily situations of human lives and make them a uniqely ethereal metaphor for human tranquility.

OPEN EYE FIGURE THEATRE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $12,000 as fiscal sponsor for the development and production of If My Feet Have Lost the Ground by TORRY BEND, a puppet artist, theatrical designer, and assistant professor in the Department of Theater Arts & Dance at the University of Minnesota. If My Feet Have Lost the Ground is a multidisciplinary performance work about a woman who finds a beating heart in an airplane seat pocket. It is a tale of unlikely love, impossible searches, and fateful self-discovery that takes place in a magical world created through video and puppetry. The mission of Open Eye Figure Theatre is to create original figure theatre, animating the inanimate on an intimate scale; train the next generation of figure theatre artists; and advance adventurous, artist-driven programming in the Open Eye theatre space.