Past
Grantees

Support was awarded to CHRIS LARSON, St. Paul, for Three Story Shack, a highly idiosyncratic film that presents the activities of a futuristic wooden capsule, a one-legged woman, and two farm hands operating a mechanical top-loaded vehicle inside a three story shack on a Midwestern landscape.

JEANNE LIOTTA received funding for observando el cielo, a 16mm experimental color sound film, documenting and imagining the human relationship to the cosmos by collecting starlight in the night sky, a civilian act of scientific observation available to anyone.

CYNTHIA MADANSKY received a grant for Presence, an experimental film that will explore two distinct forms of diary writing, namely an intimate diary of a teenage girl from Chinatown, New York and an online community based web log that addresses the suicide of Hong Kong based actor Leslie Cheung.

TRICIA McLAUGHLIN received funding to support See World, an installation of two animations back projected from inside a corner to make an aquarium. It will be an aquarium full of people where viewers can look at themselves behaving as themselves, revealing their adherence to structure, both natural and invented.

JILA NIKPAY, Minneapolis, received a grant for Keepers of the Garden, an eight-minute black and white film focused on the life of an Iranian youth and how he copes with lack of freedom. The films objective is to examine the ominous presence of the Iranian government in the private lives of its youth. The films principal character, a young man named Payam who lives in the northern part of Iran, has been in constant communication with Nikpay and has supplied rich material for the film. Nikpay will use a number of metaphorical elements in exploring the daily routines of Payams life.

A grant was awarded to KRISTEN NUTILE for Loss, an experimental documentary that explores faded memories and conventional notions of long-term grief. The film addresses the unspoken pressure in society to "move on" and "let go" after losing someone. The story unravels through a personal narrative, which centers on Nutiles loss of her father to a brain tumor over 15 years ago.

CATALINA SANTAMARIA was awarded a grant for Luminescence, a poetically inspired experimental film about light as mirror, as metaphor, and self-reflection, as shadow, as heat, as the ethereal wave particles of optics and physics and ultimately, as pure energy shimmering, glossing and flickering.

TOM SCHROEDER, Minneapolis, received a grant for A Plan, a 35mm cel-animated film about a familys boat trip. The boy in the family has an over-active imagination and fantasizes about being the hero of the day when the boat runs out of gas. The film will explore a new character style that Schroeder has designed.

KIT-YIN SNYDER was awarded funding for Me & Marco Polo, a 45-minute experimental documentary videotape that explores Marco Polos legendary adventures and accomplishments in 13th Century China as a way of understanding the rich complexities of Snyders own multiple racial, national and cultural identities.

THEA ST. OMER received a grant for Lovers, a feature-length experimental documentary that celebrates the diversity of New York City couples, and elevates the meaning of "couple" to that which transcends gender. Using art and the beauty of naked bodies as its rhetoric and discourse, not a single word is spoken. The film celebrates all couples whether straight, gay, lesbian or transgender and shows, ultimately, that each couple, comprised of two singular and distinct bodies, merits artistic study and appreciation.

MARJAN TEHRANI received a grant in support of ARUSI (Iranian Wedding), a documentary that follows Alex Tehrani, an Iranian-American and his soon to be American bride on their journey to Iran in the summer of 2003. The two embark on their journey and witness Iran as a couple. The film will examine their different perspectives of the country, insisting on the complicated cultural and political exchange at a time of heightened tension as the couple is forced to deal with their differences in the face of a simple and traditional act, a wedding.

Funding was awarded to SCOTT WESTPHAL-SOLARY for All Gods Children, a feature length documentary that takes a personal look at the damages three former Christian missionary families have endured due to unthinkable abuse their children suffered at the hands of staff at a missionary boarding school (the Mamou Alliance Academy in West Africa).

Funding was awarded for Fire Flies and Junebugs by MELISSA YOUNG. This short narrative film is about a ten-year old character named Summer who thinks that her brother is missing, only to find out later that he has been in an accident. She has to learn to deal with his death in her own, unique way. This is also a story about how adults sometimes do not deal directly with children about serious subjects such as death, leaving children to draw their own conclusions.

OLIVE BIERINGA & OTTO RAMSTAD, Minneapolis, MN, received support for Bodycartography Minnesota, a multidimensional dance video work that focuses on Minnesotas rural, urban and wilderness landscapes. They will create a series of short dance videos for outdoor projections alongside live performance events in rural and urban areas across the state.

SEOUNGHO CHO received funding for Wind Project, an experimental video that conveys the simultaneous banality and grandeur of our existence, as experiences that are exceedingly familiar are transformed into the fantastic. Time becomes distorted as water ebbs and flows in a continuum that never comes to a conclusion.

A grant was awarded to JASON DaSILVA in support of Lest We Forget, a feature-length documentary film paralleling the racial profiling of Muslims, Arabs, and South Asians today with the internment of Japanese Americans in WWII.

MATTHEW EHLING, St. Paul, MN, was awarded a grant for Taking Liberties, a documentary that examines the effects of four decades of National Security Policy on the Bill of Rights. This video will be comprised of two intertwined strands, or components. The first strand will be a brief history of the contemporary debate over security and civil liberties, charting the growth of our national security apparatus as it relates to internal security measures. The second strand will be comprised of present day case studies, where the viewer will meet real people and witness the real-world impact of pursuing security without regard for basic civil rights.

ELLEN FLANDERS received a grant in support of Zero Degrees of Separation, a feature-length documentary examining the lives of gay and lesbian Palestinian/Israeli couples and their attempts to negotiate, not only the larger conflict in their area of the Middle East, but also those of their daily lives. Upon discovering that Ezra, one of the films characters, once worked for her grandparents in Jerusalem, the director is further encouraged to examine her own family history and its relationship to the current conflict.

STEVEN FOLEY, St. Paul, MN, received a grant for Strange as Angels, a feature-length narrative film that examines the loves, lives and relationships of six African Americans living in Chicago, Illinois. A work about timing and circumstance, two variables that govern all of our lives but over which we have no control. This film is about identity, perception, sex, longing and the way that in one instant, another person's skin and breath can make you feel still and eternal in a weighted world.

LEAH GILLIAM received support for Agenda for a Landscape Vol. 6, an experimental video that investigates intersections of history, identify and technology in NASAs 1997 Pathfinder mission to Mars.