Directory of Sponsored Projects

A multi-character portrait of growing up, 13 weaves together ten personal stories of thirteen-year-olds spread across the globe. Through their eyes, we see firsthand how pressing sociopolitical issues – gender identity, religion, economic status and gun control – are shaping our youth. And despite personal and national differences, certain familiar experiences of growing up cross all borders. Presented as a series of intimate vignettes, each thirteen-year-old guides us through their world, creating a lyrical impression of a new generation. In a time of ubiquitous school shootings in the United States, Landon, of the American South owns six guns and is very proud of his ability to use them. In France, Oren is getting bar mitzvahed but cannot wear his yarmulke on the short walk to his synagogue for fear of an anti-Semitic attack. Australian Evie, née Ethan, got hormone blockers for her thirteenth birthday and proudly identifies as trans. Arti, in Kathmandu, is the first member of her family of 9 to attend school. Despite the polarizing issues characterizing the world today, each teen struggles with timeworn themes that symbolize coming of age – dating, new responsibilities, puberty. Landon has his first girlfriend, Arti worries about her popularity in school, Awa stresses about grades and her future. 13 offers poetic evidence that humanity is indeed universal and borders are truly artificial.

The feature-length documentary BEBA, is a multi-layered personal history of an Afro-Latina coming of age in New York City. Our protagonist, Beba finds herself working an unsatisfying day-to-day life when she asks herself: “Who am I and how did I get here?” Beba brings her audience along an internal journey, as she examines her community, her heritage, and herself in a personal history illustrated by interviews, various visual anecdotes, and performance art.

My So-Called Selfish Life chronicles the rise of a growing community of women who don’t want children and who reject the message that a woman’s most important–and most natural–role is to be a mother. Almost half of American women between 15 and 44 have never had children according to 2016 statistics, an all-time high. Yet choosing not to have children is still seen by many as a deviant decision made by the immoral, the unfeminine...the selfish. But beyond the name-calling, the real struggle at the heart of the choice to be childfree is bodily autonomy through reproductive rights, and access to contraception and abortion. It’s also a particularly timely topic given that our media is full of warring headlines about declining populations, on one hand, and unsustainable overpopulation on the other. The film gives voice to a community challenging our most fundamental ideas about female identity, including a 19-year-old student determined to get her tubes tied, a woman “coming out” about her regret at becoming a mother, and a reproductive rights activist whose unsuccessful fertility treatments lead to a life transformation. Through a vivid pop culture tour that spans vintage postcards of storks chasing young women, to the rise of "Instagram moms," the film connects the dots between the cultural forces that push a message of maternal inevitability so ingrained, we no longer notice it. Join us on the front lines of a seismic societal shift about how women control their bodies and their lives.

PIECE OF MIND follows three stories of San Francisco Bay Area families and individuals with serious mental illness, SMI, seeking treatment and normalcy. Linda’s son, Jesse, 38, with schizophrenia, is about to be evicted from his unlivable apartment. Frances and Patricia’s sister, Teresa, 56, diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, did not want to be taken to the hospital. When she picked up a small knife, police shot her seven times. She survived. Jeff lives with bipolar disorder and attempts suicide after losing his job at age 53. The compelling narrative interweaves delusions and real world circumstances, and reveals solutions to this public health crisis. We learn about the first signs of SMI. Jesse and Teresa have anosognosia, a brain disorder that affects 50% of persons with SMI impairing their ability to understand and perceive their mental illness. Dr. Paul Linde, ER psychiatrist at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, reveals the unwritten priority to save the shrinking number of psychiatric beds for people who are suicidal or violent, leaving the “gravely disabled” to fend for themselves. Jeff’s plans another suicide attempt. Friends convinced him to go with the police. He gets on medication for the first time. Teresa sues for compensation under the Americans With Disabilities Act. Her case boomerangs from District Court, to U.S. Supreme Court, back to District Court. Glimmers of hope emerge. Jesse is hospitalized for court mandated treatment. Jeff becomes the leader of his bipolar support group and tells his story to police officers in Crisis Intervention Trainings

Decades of industrial waste and raw sewage have turned Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal into one of the nation’s most polluted bodies of water. Now on the verge of an EPA Superfund cleanup, but still dangerously contaminated, the neighborhood along its banks is attracting boutique hotels, farm-to-table restaurants, and luxury apartments. Squeezed between two of the borough’s most desirable neighborhoods, Gowanus’s role as a place for manufacturing and a home for working class New Yorkers is changing fast. A graffiti dispatch to new residents sums up the conflict, “Welcome to Venice, Jerko.” GOWANUS CURRENT will ask, Who are the winners and losers in this transformation? Is the neighborhood finally realizing its potential with an injection of money and energy, or is it being hollowed out as its deep-rooted jobs, artists, and residents are forced elsewhere? What do we attach value to in our communities, and what are we willing to give up? Gowanus is a microcosm of the rest of urban America, and what is currently happening here will resonate with people across this country, and even abroad. The film takes a dual approach to immerse the viewer in the neighborhood, layering passages of sensory details with verite scenes featuring the people of Gowanus and their struggles. We want the audience to feel like they are there, imagine what changes to the neighborhood may bring, and consider what is most important in a community.

Heat ripples off the undulating dunes as the dust settles in China’s Gobi Desert - the aftermath of a dust storm. Meng Tao lets out a sharp whistle, then pushes forward on her motorbike, herding sheep through the dunes at sunset. The yellow desert gives way to a patch of green – Meng’s desert oasis home. Inside her tin house, a layer of sand covers everything. She picks up a broom and begins to sweep, a twice-daily ritual in this dusty land. Hwangsa: Colour of the Wind is a feature documentary that paints a vivid and surreal portrait of a shapeshifting monster that rises from the deserts of Western China and the people who live in its shadow. This monster can be enormous and daunting, or it can be next to invisible. This monster is dust, the protagonist of the film, and a phantom that haunts every frame, threading together the stories of the film’s characters, each embroiled in a battle of survival or adaptation to a rapidly changing climate. The film unfolds as a cinematic journey across a series of landscapes along the geographic path of the dust as it blows over the Asian continent, from China to Korea to Japan, and ultimately across the Pacific to North America. Through intimate stories, the film’s characters fit together as pieces of a larger mosaic, each adding a layer of complexity to the story of the dust that can’t be contained in one country, culture or continent.

ROCKY FLATS is a feature documentary about an under-the-radar yet crucial environmental story - of the massive amount of nuclear waste left in the American landscape by the Cold War. The film follows events now unfolding in Colorado, where a contentious fight has erupted over the fate of the lands around the former Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Facility. Late in 2018, the federal government opened Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge, 6,500 acres that once surrounded the most notoriously mismanaged nuclear weapons plant in U.S. history. The government claims that the lands are free of plutonium contamination, but a growing coalition of scientists, citizens, environmental groups, and physicians are vehemently disagreeing. They know that for decades, Rocky Flats leaked radioactive plutonium into the air, soil, and water of surrounding areas - long suspected to be the cause of the high rates of cancer in these communities. While a 1989 FBI raid closed down the plant forever, citizens of Colorado are still fighting to unearth the truth about Rocky Flats - including the lasting impacts it has had on their lands and towns. ROCKY FLATS follows five characters who are leading this fight, and by the end of the year, their efforts will open a Pandora's Box the federal government hoped had closed long ago. ROCKY FLATS is the story of one of the most decisive years in the recent history of our nuclear weapons program, in the process shedding crucial light on one of the most pressing environmental stories of our time.

Directed by Sundance Award-wining director Rob Fruchtman in collaboration with Cornelia Ravenal, Mikael Södersten and Wendy Sax, MOVING STORIES is about six dancers from the acclaimed Battery Dance Company who travel the world, working with young people who’ve experienced war, poverty, prejudice, sexual exploitation, and severe trauma as refugees. In India, they work with girls rescued from gender violence; in Romania, with Roma kids from one of Europe's worst slums; in South Korea, with North Korean escapees; and in Iraq, with a gifted young dancer who’s fighting to survive. Incredibly, they have just one week to teach the tools of choreography and collaboration to kids who may be enemies, who may have been abused, who may be suspicious and fearful, so that they can tell their stories through dance and perform for their communities. As they struggle to break through, the dancer-teachers confront their own frustrations. Yet their students respond in extraordinary ways - and as they prepare to perform in public in what seems an impossibly short time, both students and teachers experience surprising transformations, unlocking feelings and stories in wellsprings of creativity.

JACINTA (working title) follows a young mother in and out of prison in Maine, while exploring the relationship between trauma and love within a family fractured by a cycle of addiction and incarceration.

On January 16, 2018 I spent the day with the classical ballet company, ACOSTA DANZA while they were in rehearsals at their newly renovated studios in the center of Havana, Cuba. The film takes an intimate look at the company as they rehearse for their upcoming tour and New York Debut. Six of the dancers are interviewed showing the range of background, economic and otherwise and general pride that Cuban dancers hold for their country's free, high quality education and arts training under the socialist regime,. The primarily "black" Cuban dancers speak about their path to becoming dancers, classical Ballet versus modern or contemporary dance and whether or not they had an awareness of race in their professional and culture trajectory. The goal of the film is to give a glimpse into the artistic stories and paths of these 6 dancers while also highlighting a larger lens on the tradition of excellence in Cuban dance and the cultural phenomenon of one of Cuba’s biggest stars returning home to Cuba to start an exciting new company.

“Bought/Broken” is an interactive experience that examines the relationships and violence of abuse through the lens of objects bought, broken and repaired, evoking memories through objects and exploring the idea of gain and loss. Since Fall of 2014, I have been compositing the experiences and stories of domestic violence survivors, whose personal items were broken during an altercation, bought out of remorse, or rebuilt after leaving the relationship. The stories behind the objects are from people whose partners belittled, threatened, or hurt the - people from many ages and socio-economic backgrounds. The nature of the objects reflects the escalation of control through emotional and then physical violence. The project has three parts: Workshops, Film, and Installation. People can submit or tag their own bought, broken or repaired objects. The “repaired” objects relate to how people transcend their trauma to hopefully reach peace or closure.

In 2003, Oprah Winfrey sought out some of America’s greatest poets to contribute to an issue of OWN Magazine dedicated to the human body. There was a mad dash by poets to choose the heart, the brain and the skin to serve as poetic metaphor for their balladry. African American poet Nikki Giovanni’s choice best illustrates her approach to life. She chose the feet and then spun a compelling and inspirational tale using the feet of African American women to describe their struggle and ultimate triumph over oppression. This is the life work of Nikki Giovanni, using poetry, humor and satire to inspire us to think, challenge assumptions and ultimately demand equity and justice. Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project opens within the privacy of Nikki’s present-day home in Blacksburg, Virginia, as she reluctantly reckons with the meaning of her legacy, her struggles with her health, and the inevitable march of time. Through the artistry and life of a poet who has lived life and created work to the beat of her own drum, the film poses universal questions on the human condition while simultaneously pushing the boundaries of biographical storytelling through impressionistic visual language, innovative editing techniques, and stylized treatments of Giovanni’s poetry that bring her written words to life.

Every Friday night, former convicts and prisoners’ loved ones meet in downtown Houston to create “The Prison Show,” a radio show that caters to prisoners and the families they've left behind. For decades, the staff has been trying to make life a little easier for those who have loved ones that are locked up, as well as for those who are incarcerated. They want to change the public's perception of prisoners to remind us that the people behind bars are husbands, fathers, sons and daughters. And they want prisoners to remember that people on the outside are waiting for them. The first hour offers news and talk about Texas prisons and the courts. However, it is the second hour that has made the radio show popular, when relatives can call in live to leave messages to those who are listening behind bars. For two minutes, inmates can hear their loved ones’ voice, as well as the sounds of freedom: a child crying, a dog barking, an ice-cream truck in the background… These everyday noises remind them of what they hope to find again someday. In Texas, where rarely a month goes by without an execution, the radio produces a special program that airs during each execution. Legal analysts comment the case, while activists report from outside the Death House. The staff conducts an interview with the inmate a few weeks before he is scheduled to be put to death. While he is strapped on a gurney and technicians prepare the

Razing Liberty Square follows three female protagonists fighting for the soul of one of the last African-American neighborhoods in Miami, historic Liberty Square. Best known as the real-life location for the Oscar-winning film Moonlight. A fiery principal of a school that grew out of necessity for at-risk kids who can’t attend public school, she is saving them one by one, keeping her ideals and refusing to sell out. An 86-year old preservationist who will not give up the last tangible piece of Miami’s black history and a single-mom turned housing activist who won’t be bought or intimidated out of her home. They are defending their community against the onslaught of ‘Climate Gentrification’ since their neighborhood literally sits on the highest and driest land in Miami, a city under threat of rising sea levels due to Global Warming. And now after years of neglect by the city, developers are circling the neighborhood like buzzards. With Miami being one of the most diverse but also most segregated cities in the country, Razing Liberty Square encapsulates the past and future of public housing, putting human faces on the housing crisis. Their success and failures speak to one of the biggest questions of our time: is fair housing in our cities a basic human right?

The film will capture the stories of people in the Park, the culturally and economically diverse neighborhoods that surround it, and how its history gives the Park unique cultural significance that resonates 150 years later. We hope to show the importance of public parks, as a meeting place for communities and as a place to connect with nature.

TRAVEL NOTES OF A GEECHEE GIRL celebrates the life of Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor-- writer, chef, actor and broadcast journalist, whose unconventional life took her from a rural African-American Gullah Geechee community in South Carolina Lowcountry to an international career involving major 20th C intellectual, artistic and social movements. Through her travels and living in New York, Paris and D.C., this six foot Renaissance woman from Bo Peep Crossroads enraptured poets and politicians alike with her humor, wit, stories, cuisine and embrace of life. Julie Dash will draw on her connections to the Gullah culture, powerfully visible in her epic film, Daughters of the Dust. Through a narrative blend of first-person storytelling, archival images and sounds, contemporary landscapes, and dramatic evocations of historical moments, we will travel with Vertamae as she moves with her family to Philadelphia in the 1940s, meets lifelong friends Nina Simone and Charles Fuller, before sailing to Paris in the 1950s. There she joins a diverse circle of artists and activists including Allen Ginsberg, and writes On The Left Bank at The Beat Hotel, marries sculptor Robert Grosvenor, and creates a bohemian life with her daughters after separating. Doubleday publishes her memoir cookbook in 1970. A pioneering television chef on PBS and commentator on NPR, friends like Muhammad Ali and Maya Angelou entreat her for a taste of home cooking. Like her landmark cookbook, Vibration Cooking, or the Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl, recipes for food/living will punctuate this narrative along with locales traversed throughout Vertamae’s remarkable journey.

On April 2016, 700 law enforcement officers swarmed a housing project in the Bronx, arresting 120 people in what federal prosecutors later said was the “largest gang bust in modern New York history.” TROUBLE FIND YOU tells the story of a Kraig Lewis and his family, whose lives were derailed by this bust and Lewis's subsequent prosecution. The film explores the difficulty of living as a black man in America whose community is highly surveilled and whose friendships and past is weaponized against him.

At the southern edge of Japan, the construction of a new U.S. military base has sharply divided the residents of Okinawa Island, an island dominated by 32 U.S. military facilities. In 2016, a local woman is brutally murdered by an American contractor, igniting tensions that have been brewing since the U.S. occupation began in 1945. In late-2016, Okinawan anti-base activist Hiroji Yamashiro is arrested and thrown into solitary confinement on charges related to protest activities. An indigenous shaman continues to breathe life into the dying traditions of the Ryukyu era, while supporting the conservative, pro-military government. More divided than ever, Okinawans must choose sides during a critical gubernatorial election that will determine the future of the island. A meditation on nature, history and the deep insidious effects of imperialism, Okinawa Documentary carefully examines the complexities of a little-known island that is vital to regional politics.