Filmmaker: Director: Ansley West; Producer and Editor: Danielle Bernstein
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: Unlisted
Film Type: Documentary
Documentary about a group of empowered Ugandan women living with HIV and their fight for survival through sustainable farming methods. Narrated by Florence, a 55-year-old woman who has been living with the virus for over 13 years, the story follows the lives and histories of four Ugandan women of different ages who have all been diagnosed with HIV and have decided to seek treatment. These women see their only opportunity for survival is through agriculture and unity. Their stories of betrayal and suffering unfold, ultimately leading to voices of strength and hope thanks to the gardens and women’s support group. Mothers of a Nation leads you into their world, through their eyes and with their voices.
Filmmaker: Lily Henderson (director/producer); Leslie Koren (producer)
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2010
Film Type: Documentary
The film explores why a diverse group of New Yorkers choose to spend their free time interacting with hospice patients whom they barely know.The film also looks at how these volunteers apply their hospice experience to their own lives and senses of dying from both a cultural and personal viewpoint. Volunteers interviewed include a corporate lawyer, a man with chronic depression, a shamanic healer, a high school student, a retired US Diplomat, a women’s choir who sing to the dying and a salesman/poet.
Filmmaker: Margarita Jimeno
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2010
Film Type: Narrative
Three finalists fiercely compete in the “Most Wanted” swimming competition. The prize? Citizenship to the most desired country in the world. SWIMMING AWAY is a story about the personal and political borders that exist in reality and in our subconscious. The film is a provocation to start a dialogue that deals with themes of immigration, foreign policy and what it means to belong.
Filmmaker: Wu Ingrid Tsang (Director), Ernesto M. Foronda (Producer)
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2010
Film Type: Documentary
DAMELO TODO is a hybrid documentary/narrative depicting immigrant Latina transgender women who build community with queer performance artists at downtown Los Angeles bar the “Silver Platter”. Website: http://www.damelotodofilm.com
Filmmaker: Producers: Jeff Deutchman, Natalie Difford; Associate Producer: Isabel Teitler
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2010
Film Type: Documentary
Two weeks before the election of Barack Obama, I asked friends of mine around the world to record their experiences of 11/4/08, a day that had become “historic” before it had even taken place. In this feature documentary, we witness a global canvas begin to unfold: in St. Louis and Austin, idealistic volunteers think they can turn their states blue; in Chicago, voter lines are made even longer when Obama shows up to cast his own vote; in Alaska, children seem to be as invested in the election results as their parents; in Paris, an organization discusses whether there could ever be a black President of France; in Dubai, Berlin, Geneva and New Delhi, expatriates express their emotion from a distance; and in Harlem, a felon casts doubt on whether any of this will actually affect his life. As we approach the final announcement of Obama’s victory at 11pm EST, what emerges is a portrait of how people choose to live through “history”: the celebration of a new future remaining entangled with the universally visible tensions of the past.
Filmmaker: Director/Producer: Sam Lee; Producers: Nancy Roth and Brooke Stevens
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
Documentary feature that travels the globe to document the impact of psychological humanitarian aid in areas of crisis including refugee camps, conflict zones and territories in situations of emergency. Following a global community of clowns that operate under the organization Clowns Without Borders, the film explores the unorthodox approach of clowning and its potential to bring sustainable change to communities and cultures throughout the world.
Filmmaker: Cheryl Dunye, Director; Ernesto Foronda, Producer
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
Shot on HDV, the OWLs is an experimental narrative fusing elements of film noir and documentary films, and dealing with aging in the queer community. This is the latest project from Cheryl Dunye, the acclaimed director of four features, including the underground classic WATERMELON WOMAN.
Filmmaker: Director/Producer: Annie Heringer
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
Feature-length documentary on the disappearing culture of homing pigeon racing in New York City. This intimate film, shot in color mini-DV, shows a very different side of the city—working-class men in the outer boroughs carrying on a tradition that most have forgotten, and that may soon cease to exist. But for the aficionados who remain in the game, it’s a way of life.
Filmmaker: Director/Producer: Emma Piper-Burket; Producers: Andy Scott, Ted Grudin
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: Unlisted
Film Type: Documentary
Agriculture began in Iraq nearly 10,000 years ago with the cultivation of crops such wheat, barley and lentils; yet today the country must import the majority of its food and agricultural supplies. In a short film, multi-disciplinary website and a farmer & seed exchange, The Iraqi Seed Project explores the agricultural heritage of Iraq from ancient times to the present.
Filmmaker: Director / Producer: Lori Silverbush, Kristi Jacobson
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: Unlisted
Film Type: Documentary
America is one of the world’s wealthiest nations. And yet, we remain the only country in the developed world where some 49 million people go hungry despite sufficient resources, technology and farmable land to provide nutritious, affordable food for all. As the economy continues to weaken, millions more join the ranks every day. Hunger is detrimental to health, productivity, and learning—especially for the 17 million hungry American children—posing serious economic, social and cultural implications for this country.
Hungry in America is a feature-length documentary that presents an unflinching look at the root causes behind this sobering reality and asks tough questions about why a nation that could feed all of its citizens has failed to do so.
Filmmaker: Richard Barber
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
The Whole Gritty City tells the story of young African Americans growing up in New Orleans, and the powerful forces vying to shape them. It’s about the pervasive realities of incarceration and violence that surround them, and the lifeline they find in the city’s musical mentors. We meet 11-year-old trumpet player Bear Williams, one of a hundred young novice musicians in The Roots of Music Marching Band preparing to play in their first Mardi Gras parades. We watch five teachers and musicians giving these kids the attention and guidance they credit with saving their own lives.
Filmmaker: Mai Iskander
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
Garbage Dreams follows three teenage boys born into the trash trade and growing up in the world’s largest garbage village. It is the home to 60,000 Zaballeen, Egypt’s “garbage people.” When their community is suddenly faced with the globalization of their trade, each boy is forced to make choices that will impact his life and the future of his community.
Filmmaker: Sarah Teitler
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
Fast-paced, visually compelling and historically-rich 30-minute video documentary about the U.S. policy towards Cuba from the mid-1950s to the present.
Filmmaker: Maital Guttman
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
This feature-length documentary film follows one woman’s story of hope living with HIV in South Africa.
Filmmaker: Edet Belzberg
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
Traversing time and continents to explore genocide and the world’s response, Watchers of the Sky interweaves the lives of four exceptional visionaries while setting out to uncover the story of Raphael Lemkin, one of the greatest humanitarians of the twentieth century.
Filmmaker: Ross Kauffman, Jeremy Yaches, Dear John Films, LLC
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
Wait For Me is the story of a mother’s spiritual and emotional search for her son—a ceaseless trek, propelled by an unconditional love and an unwavering belief that he may still be alive.
Filmmaker: Erica Scharf (director), Sara Alize Cross (producer)
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
As the film chronicles the journeys of its three main subjects, it engages in an exploration of identity. Many living on the Navajo reservation find themselves torn between two often-contradictory cultures. Thomas, Tamara and Gabby embody this conflict and their struggles to define themselves as both Native American and modern American lie at the heart of the film.
Filmmaker: Ricki Stern, Break Thru Films
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
The Trials of Darryl Hunt is a feature documentary about a brutal rape/murder case and a wrongly convicted man, Darryl Hunt, who spent nearly twenty years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Both a social justice story and a personally driven narrative, the film chronicles this capital case from 1984 through 2004.
Filmmaker: Sarah Athanas
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
Feature-length doc that tells the story of the rivers, the people, and the spirit of Patagonia—all of which stands to be threatened by the construction of five major hydroelectric dams.
Filmmaker: Kristi Jacobsen, BR/Catalyst Films
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
The ‘40s and ‘50s were a classic period in New York City nightlife, when the saloonkeeper was king and regular folks could drink with celebrities like Frank Sinatra and Jackie Gleason. In this documentary, Kristi Jacobson profiles her grandfather, the king of kings: Toots Shor of the eponymous restaurant and saloon, which was once the place to be seen in Manhattan.
Filmmaker: Paul Cronin (director), Linda Saetre (executive producer)
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
Documentary film about the Spring 1968 Columbia University student strikes. A Time to Stir features new interviews with leading players of a wide variety of persuasions including SDS students who occupied four buildings on campus, African-American students who were gathered on their own in Hamilton Hall, older politically active graduate students who took issue with SDS leadership, Columbia students who opposed the takeover of campus by protesters, faculty both for and against the activists, and the Tactical Patrol Force who cleared the buildings on the orders of the university administration.
Filmmaker: Andrea Eisenman (director), Helen Eisenman, Julie Englander (producer)
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
An hour-long documentary about love, denial, and the genetic disease cystic fibrosis. Director Andrea Eisenman, who suffers from CF, finds her way into Hasidic and Orthodox Jewish communities where strict religious practices and a stigma against disclosing disease reign. There she meets three brave individuals with CF who, without shaming their families or violating the traditions of their tight-knit communities, struggle to tend to their bodies- and souls.
Filmmaker: Daria Summers and Meg McLagan
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
Lioness tells the story of a group of female Army support soldiers who were part of the first program in American history to send women into direct ground combat. Without the same training as their male counterparts but with a commitment to serve as needed, these young women fought in some of the bloodiest counterinsurgency battles of the Iraq war and returned home as part of this country’s first generation of female combat veterans. “Lioness” makes public, for the first time, their hidden history.
Filmmaker: Jenai Cutcher
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
Thinking On Their Feet is a feature-length documentary about the women who revolutionized the art of American percussive dance. Determined to keep tap dance alive, they sought out former vaudeville and MGM hoofers, convinced them to return to the stage, forged a place for tap in venues better known for producing ballet and modern dance, and instigated what dancer Brenda Bufalino refers to as the “Tap Renaissance.”
Filmmaker: Cheryl Furjanic
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
About U.S. Women’s synchronized swimming team at 2004 Olympics
Filmmaker: Jeff Zimbalist
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
Narrative fiction feature film based on a true story in Colombia about the first ever official Comunidad de Paz, or community of peace. This is the story of Alcira Gil, a 14-year old Columbian girl violently uprooted from her home, and of Samantha Morris, a loyal Coca Cola executive in Atlanta assigned to protect corporate interest in Columbia’s most sought after land, Uraba.
Filmmaker: Thomas Adjani
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
Revenge on a Ghost is a narrative fiction thriller that tells the story of Chris Dante, after a tour in Iraq, he is back in the United States where his past haunts him: he tortured prisoners while in Iraq.
Filmmaker: Colin Weil/Jay Corcoran, Wringinghand Productions
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
Documentary about crystal meth and how it is fueling unsafe sex practices among gay men.
Filmmaker: Robert Hatch-Miller
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
Republican father runs for office; liberal son covers his campaign.
Filmmaker: Edet Belzberg (director), Amelia Green-Dove (producer)
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
The Recruiter is a feature-length documentary that travels to the Louisiana coast to capture a phenomenon now occurring throughout the United States – the intense push to recruit new soldiers into the U.S. Army. What distinguishes this story is its remarkable central character, Louisiana’s Sergeant First Class Clay Usie, one of the most successful Army recruiters working in America. Shot in verite style, The Recruiter captures Sgt. Usie’s day-to-day life – almost entirely dedicated to his mission of finding new soldiers – over a nine-month period in his hometown of Houma, Louisiana. The film has already been completed. It premiered at Sundance in 2008 and was broadcast on HBO. Currently seeking funding for outreach and distribution.
Filmmaker: Frank Hamilton, Havahula Productions
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
A multimedia project that will engage public radio audiences in shaping the future of public radio through an interactive website and 56 minute color video documentary.
Filmmaker: Ambika Samarthya, Arth Films, LLC
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
The incidence of child-headed families in India is on the rise. Children with HIV infected parents in India suffer a dual predicament. Often treated as the property of the adults, their rights and freedoms are violated, while they also suffer from the disease itself and the social stigma and financial burdens it brings.
Filmmaker: Beth Murphy/Sean FlynnPrinciple Pictures
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
A modern-day Oskar Schindler story about a young American fighting to save those Iraqis whose lives are in danger because they worked for the U.S.
Filmmaker: Gini Reticker (director), Abigail Disney (producer)
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
Pray the Devil Back to Hell chronicles the remarkable story of the courageous Liberian women who came together to end a bloody civil war and bring peace to their shattered country.
Filmmaker: Walter Matteson/Josh Alexander/Daniel Chalfen
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
Feature length documentary exploring the glamorous side of aging. Pretty old will follow five contestants as they compete for the Senior Sweetheart Beauty Pageant.
Filmmaker: Mark Levinson (director), Carla Solomon/Andrea Miller (producers)
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
For nearly twenty years, physicists have been building the largest experiment in history, an experiment of such ambition and complexity that it has required the collaboration of 10,000 scientists from over 100 different countries. The Large Hadron Collider is a 17-mile ring buried beneath the countryside of Switzerland and France. Designed to smash trillions of protons together at nearly the speed of light, the LHC will recreate the extreme conditions that existed a fraction of a second after the Big Bang. What the LHC reveals could change our understanding of everything. Failure could leave us in the dark for generations to come. The documentary feature Particle Fever captures this unfolding drama by focusing on the personal stories of several of its key figures – passionate, funny, brilliant spirits standing at the threshold of discovery. These modern adventurers have faced impossible technical challenges, risked careers, sacrificed personal relationships and continually struggled with government support in their single-minded quest to understand the nature of the universe.
Filmmaker: Allison Berg and Frank Kerauden
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
Feature-length documentary about the legendary Upper West Side bar P&G Cafe. Established in 1942, the P&G is one of the oldest family owned and operated bars in New York City. Now in its third generation, the bar is being forced to shut its doors to the pressures of the co-op board that controls the building as they want to triple the rent. Documenting the last year of the bar’s existence, the film tells the stories of the owners, employees and patrons that have depended on this bar for the past 67 years and what the community will be losing once the doors are finally closed.
Filmmaker: Steve Dorst, Dorst Mediaworks
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
In Aretha Louise Mbango’s Cameroon, the music scene is dynamic, but society is in flux. Through the stories of two charismatic rap artists, Koppo and Lady B, this unflinching documentary chronicles the decline and revitalization of tradition and a new generation’s controversial response. It is an intimate, street-level portrait of a newly confident African urban culture and its musical prophets.
Filmmaker: Ben Niles, Plow Productions, LLC
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
Film follows the making of a single Steinway piano from start to finish. This film is complete, but filmmaker is seeking additional post production funding.
Filmmaker: Sabrina McCormick
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
Two hundred and seventy thousand women will contract breast cancer this year. Forty thousand will die of it; every 13 minutes we will lose another woman to the disease. This documentary film makes these statistics real by following one woman who is diagnosed, treated and recovers from breast cancer. Robin demands to know why she got breast cancer, posing questions about their exposure to environmental toxics. Her intimate story brings the visually hidden experience of breast cancer into light, and motivates us to ask why so much illness and why don’t we know how to stop it?
Filmmaker: Risa Morimoto
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Multimedia
A narrative dramatic feature film on the life of renowned sculptor and artist, Isamu Noguchi.
Filmmaker: Jenn Shaw, Jnine Media
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
My Fellow Organizers documents Barack Obama’s presidential campaign using the platform of the organizing fellows summer program. Pennsylvania is one of the most critical and challenging states of the election and a blowout of votes in Philadelphia is needed in order win. Although Obama’s message of hope is clear, incorporating that into local politics and apathy within the area is difficult. The organizers are often met with distrust and constant conflict. In addition, they must deal with personal struggles, internal organizational issues, and local political corruption. The task seems unreachable. How do you get a community to believe in a system that has consistently failed them? Everyone in the world knows the outcome of the election but this is the real story of how a group of young people helped to inspire a city and win the election for Barack Obama.
Filmmaker: Maital Guttman, Dew Drop Films
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
Mechina: A Preparation reveals a side of Israel unseen in the media, a side that exposes the people beyond the conflict and beneath the uniform. In the summer of 2004, Maital launches a journey to discover what it means to be eighteen in Israel. Living with Amitai and his five friends as they prepare for their army service, she uncovers the complexity of being young and idealistic in a time of war, as the teens transition from students to soldiers.
Filmmaker: Greg Barker (director)
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
Charismatic, charming and complex, Sergio Vieira de Mello was the world’s go-to guy, a man who could descend into the most dangerous places, charm the worst war criminals, and somehow protect the lives of the ordinary people to whom he’d devoted his life. “Sergio” tells the gripping, inspiring story of his most treacherous mission ever—a mission in which his own life hangs in the balance.
Filmmaker: Christina Heller, co-director/producer
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
A 75-minute social and political documentary examining the people of The Free State Project, ordinary citizens attempting to reclaim their voice against the U.S government, who they believe shares neither their priorities or interests.
Filmmaker: Jonathan Stack, Gabriel Films
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
Liberia: An Uncivil War provides an in-depth case study of one of the many brutal civil wars which have sprung up like wild fires across Africa. It is an exciting example of war-time journalism - white knuckles reporting with bullets ricocheting just feet from the camera placed in a historical context stretching back nearly two hundred years.
Filmmaker: Ricki Stern, Break Thru Films
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
Last Woman Standing is the story of Nancy Pollock, a beautiful, kind and energetic 40 year-old teacher who has been living with and dying from breast cancer for 12 years. Nancy was first diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 28 as she was planning her wedding. Initially, her prognosis was relatively optimistic. Two years later, however, her cancer was back with a vengeance and her life expectancy was two years. “Last Woman Standing” is a story about living fully and happily in the face of pain, isolation, and certain death.
Filmmaker: Wendy Ewald (director)
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
A one-hour documentary about the Innu people of Labrador and Wendy Ewalds work with them over the past forty years.
Filmmaker: Chris Schuessler (director)/Maya Mumma (producer), Quotidian Productions
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
“Inkaland” is a feature-length documentary that reveals the drastic effects of tourism on the town of Ollantaytambo (Peru) and its surrounding villages, and looks at efforts to harness it for the good of the people and the environment.
Filmmaker: Jeremiah Zagar (director), Jeremy Yaches (producer)
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
Over the past four decades, artist Isaiah Zagar has covered more than 50,000 square feet of Philadelphia with stunning mosaic murals. In A Dream is a documentary feature film that chronicles his work and his tumultuous relationship with his wife, Julia. It follows the Zagars as their marriage implodes and a harrowing new chapter in their life unfolds.
Filmmaker: Nerina Penzhorn
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
An hour-long documentary that interweaves three stories of South African lesbians who adopt across racial lines.
Filmmaker: Joy E. Reed, Oh, MY! Productions
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
52 Men Coming Together is a documentary exploring the search by gay men for a sense of community, belonging and spiritual awareness through the practice of hot nude yoga.
Filmmaker: Carol Dysinger (director), BOLO Productions
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
Camp Victory, Afghanistan follows the stories of the unlikely people who have been given a nearly impossible and yet essential task to craft a peaceful, secure, and orderly 21st century nation out of a war-torn, corrupt, stratified, and archaic Afghanistan
Filmmaker: Victoria Mills
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
Hidden Battles is a dramatic and deeply personal film about the psychological impact of killing on the lives of soldiers. The soldiers represent a cross section of nationalities, gender, class and race. We are invited into their homes, jobs, relationships, and minds, as they unveil intimate memories and unconscious revelations about the central act of war - the killing of another human being.
Filmmaker: Stephen T. Maing
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
High Tech, Low Life is a full length documentary filmed in 24P digital video about a young renegade blogger who challenges the boundaries of free speech and becomes one of China’s first citizen reporters.
Filmmaker: Landon Van Soest/Jeremy Levine; Waverly Sounds and Moving Images
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
Good Fortune is a feature length documentary that explores how massive, international efforts to alleviate poverty in Africa may be undermining the very communities they are aimed at benefiting. Shot over three years across Kenya’s diverse landscapes, the film interweaves intimate portraits of three individuals targeted by massive international development projects. Contrasted with the good-willed humanitarians working against the odds to stimulate positive change, Good Fortune presents a unique perspective on the struggle to overcome world poverty.
Filmmaker: Marilyn Ness, Necessary Films
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
Genome: The Future is Now will be a six-hour cinema verite documentary series with exclusive access to the PGP (personal genome project) and its volunteers. The series will weave the compelling, unprecedented, and often unexpected personal experiences of the PGP volunteers and scientists and follow the emerging challenges arising almost daily for the leading scientists and doctors on the frontlines of genomics and ethics.
Filmmaker: Director/Producer: Daniel Karslake; Producers: Helen Mendoza, Michael Huffington; Executive Producers: Perch Ducote, Jeanne Robertson, Bruce Bastian
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
Every three seconds someone dies somewhere in the world in extreme poverty. Usually it’s a child and usually it’s from a preventable disease. In 1998, it was determined that for the very first time in human history, we have everything we need to end extreme poverty and hunger across the globe.
So if we know how to end the suffering, why aren’t we?
Every 3 Seconds is a full-length feature documentary film that will make a clear case that hunger and extreme poverty can and must be ended. It will also take a hard look at why we, as human beings, are choosing not to make it happen.
Filmmaker: Annie Sundberg/Ricky Stern, Break Thru Films
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
In this profound and eye-opening film, Award-winning veteran documentarians Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg accompany Wolf as she discusses America’s dangerous passage towards becoming a society of fear and surveillance, and expresses her plea to restore our nation’s most cherished values. Film is currently seeking outreach and distribution funds.
Filmmaker: Jonathan Stack, Gabriel Films
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
Empire State follows several local legislators, good government figures and press personalites through one yaer of wrangling and deal making in Albany, the capitol of New York State.
Filmmaker: Marcelo Bukin (director)
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Mixed Genre, Fiction, Documentary, Experimental
For poverty-stricken families in Nicaragua, even gathering food is a daily struggle. Filmmaker Bukin descends on a rural area where deprived children briefly escape their daily misery in a painting class. He also follows them home, to the harsh reality. Here, vanished parents, infant mortality and child labour are rife. Despite the barren living conditions, there are also moments of joy. A family that works on the refuse dump, looking for aluminium and other saleable goods, is happy to be together. A young father entertains his sons with his drawing skills. All parents hope their children will escape illiteracy. Bukin is alert to the photogenic, lush surroundings and often shoots from a child’s eye-view, which entices children to play with the camera.
Filmmaker: Katy Chevigny
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: Unlisted
Film Type: Documentary
A verité documentary that follows a middle-American punk rock band as they juggle family, careers and survival in America’s cutthroat music industry.
Filmmaker: Ian Cheney, Wicked Delicate Films
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
The City Dark is a feature documentary about light pollution and the disappearance of the night. The film follows filmmaker Ian Cheney, who moves to New York City and discovers skies almost completely devoid of stars. Posing a deceptively simple question- why do we need the night?- he leads viewers on a quest to understand what is lost in the glare of the city lights. Blending a humorous tone with majestic time-lapse footage of the night sky, what follows is both unprecedented portrait of our world after dusk, and a meditation on out relationship to the starts.
Filmmaker: James Darling/Jessalyn Haefele, Tea Dragon Films
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: Unlisted
Film Type: Documentary
In an eerie not-too-distant future, a young man tries to escape from his homeland in the dead of winter. As this teenage boy is chased by hunters through the harsh wilderness approaching the border, he recalls the perilous steps of his journey and the fateful doctor’s visit that motivated his departure. Boy or Man? Hero or Traitor? Refugee of Fugitive?
Filmmaker: Alexandre Moors/Brian Welsh
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: Unlisted
Film Type: Documentary
Set in the Chinese community of a low income American suburb, “Cherry Blossom” tells the extraordinary story of a little girl gifted with psychic powers that her parents choose to exploit in order to elevate the family from its social condition.
Filmmaker: Nik Dunlop (director), Annie Sundberg (producer), Break Thru Films
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
The powerful story of a former junta member and Burmese soldier who risks everything to become a pro-democracy activist.
Filmmaker: Jolene Pinder/Sarah Zaman, Zeppelin Films
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
Bismillah follows the beginnings of one Muslim woman’s groundbreaking struggle against America’s political structure. The film tells the story of Farheen Hakeem, a feisty 31-year-old Muslim Girl Scout troop leader who puts herself under public scrutiny by taking part in the consummate patriotic act—running for office. Farheen’s challenge: to tackle head-on the assumptions our society makes about Muslims today. The daughter of Indian immigrants, Farheen is the first Muslim woman to run for office in Minnesota. She is not your typical Muslim woman. She covers her head but hugs men. She is neither apologetic for her religious beliefs nor silent about the biases she sees in her community. She lives the phrase emblazoned on her favorite t-shirt: “This is what a radical Muslim feminist looks like.”
Filmmaker: Marilyn Ness, Necessary Films
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: Unlisted
Film Type: Documentary
By 1987, 70% of hemophiliacs in the Unites States – 10,000 people – were infected with HIV and hepatitis from their FDA approved medication. They leave behind a legacy of suffering that reminds each of us what can happen when the “system” fails. “Bad Blood” is a cautionary tale, bringing together patients, doctors, drug manufacturers, and government regulators to recollect how the worst medical disaster of the 20th Century was allowed to occur and cautions us to remember, remain vigilant, and to demand a safer system.
Filmmaker: Roberto Guerra, Kathy Brew, Mosquito Productions
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
A women’s prison in Peru holds a beauty pageant where inmates, mostly foreigners arrested for attempted drug smuggling, compete for the title Miss Primavera. The core of the documentary is the personal stories of the contestants: their mistakes, their dreams, their survival, their preparation for Miss Primavera. Why the women are there is the backdrop of the story—as collateral damage in the international war on drugs.
Filmmaker: Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine (directors), Yael Melamede and Emanuel Michael (producers), Mariane Pearl, Angelina Jolie, Christina Weiss Lurie, Jeffrey Lurie and Ryan A. Brooks (executive producers)
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Narrative
Resilient is a celebration of the countless acts of women all over the world whose dreams are bigger than just quietly surviving brutality and injustice. Filmmakers Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine, together with journalist Mariane Pearl, will interweave profiles of four such women who imagine, and are achieving, a uniquely feminine path to changing the world in countless acts of bravery that, together, are catching the attention of a world looking for new ways of defining what it is be a human and our responsibilities as global citizens.
Filmmaker: Linda Hoaglund
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Documentary
ANPO will reveal the untold story of the 1960 political crisis over the establishment of permanent U.S. military bases in Japan through the electrifying cultural legacy of artists who captured this defining moment in the country’s history.
Filmmaker: Gina Telaroli/Meerkat Media
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2009
Film Type: Narrative
Set against the stark winter beauty of Nantucket, Massachusetts, A Little Death is a narrative film in which a young woman takes care of an island summer home while its occupants are gone for the season. It’s the story of a woman struggling to redefine the moral boundaries that dominate her life, while confronting the complexity of loneliness. The film assumes a deliberate and patient pace, not only to complement the young woman’s gradual introspective journey, but also to afford the audience time to reflect upon and consider their own relationship with nature.
Filmmaker: Angela Tucker
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: Unlisted
Film Type: Documentary
“Lo” is a feature-length documentary that transforms one woman’s personal experience with bipolar disorder into a platform for more broadly exploring the phenomenon of mental illness among African American women. The filmmaker yearns to create a documentary that will spark discussion about how the stigma of mental illness in the African American community often leads to silence, isolation, and ultimately to a refusal by African American women to seek proper treatment.
Filmmaker: Lawrence Konner, the Doc-mentary Campaign
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: Unlisted
Film Type: Documentary
A comprehensive look at the real cost behind Wal-Mart’s “everyday low prices.”