Directory of Sponsored Projects

Spanning seven years of cinema vérité surveillance, ANYTHING YOU LOSE is a feature documentary focusing on a little known and fast growing sector of society - those who are trying to conceive with the aid of Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART). A personal exploration, it studies the psychological effects of prolonged exposure to the treatments and the innate human need to connect through time and generations. 7.5 million people domestically struggle to conceive through ART. Odds are, you know someone who’s going through the treatments. And odds are, they haven’t told you. Gutsy and original, the hybrid documentary ANYTHING YOU LOSE takes on the unconventional subject of infertility and elevates it to the heights of cinema vérité drama. The informational field we live in is abundant with stories of scientific breakthroughs and babies born to women in their fifties. But the reality of the experience is frequently quite different. For every miracle announcement there are decades of trial and failure. What’s kept behind the scenes in most scenarios becomes the precious bloodline of this story. For the late bloomers Eddie and Irina, to have a child means to seal their union and to join in the ranks of the responsible adults, somewhat reluctantly, to the delight of their families. But when Assisted Reproductive Technologies do not deliver as surely as advertised, the quest becomes a matter of importance; demanding time, emotional maturity, stealthy focus and resources. ANYTHING YOU LOSE speaks volumes about reaching into the depths of self for added strength.

This is a story about four women who spent various lengths of time in jail or prison and explores the challenges they face as returning citizens. 25-year-old Jessica lost custody of her son for a crime she committed to support her drug habit. When her mother died of a heroin overdose, Jessica she said she would never do heroin, but eventually succumbed to the drug. She’s been clean for the last two years and gets to see her son every weekend. Nicole, 34, was under the influence when she was arrested for assisting in a series of robberies in an attempt to supplement her husband’s income to provide for their two children. She has not been able to return to her job with the VA, but is managing to juggle a couple of part-time jobs. Kim is 54. She stole money from her organization, only enough she says, to feed her family and pay some bills. She has had difficulty finding work and housing and is currently living with friends. Alfreda, 60, spent almost 10 years in Federal prison on conspiracy charges for making a phone call to assist her son who was arrested for selling drugs. She is no longer able to use her degrees in Education to teach in the Baltimore City School system. Although these stories are about women in Baltimore, they could be in any city in America where the criminal justice system inadequately addresses the needs of women, inside or out.

WOMEN IN BLUE opens in 2017 as Chief Janée Harteau—the Minneapolis Police Department's first female chief and by then five years in office—works to remake her department by getting rid of bad cops, retraining others, and demanding accountability. As part of her reform efforts, she works to recruit more women and promote them within the force into positions of leadership. But in July 2017, when the police shooting of the unarmed white, Australian woman Justine Damond rocks the city and makes international news, Chief Harteau is forced to resign. The new chief—a man of color—restructures the department and promotes only men to his top brass. With reports about racial bias and police brutality in the news daily, the film follows the women of the MPD over 18 months as they fight to not only “protect and serve” the people of Minneapolis, but also restore gender equity to their department. Unprecedented in its point of view and urgently needed, WOMEN IN BLUE is a film about women and policing, but it’s also a film about women in a heavily male-dominated workforce, and the struggles, and difficult choices, that they are forced to confront. It’s as much a Minneapolis story as it is a national one.

Selvi, like so many girls living within India’s patriarchal culture, is forced to marry at 14, only to find herself in a violent marriage. One day in deep despair, she chooses to escape, going on to become South India’s first female taxi driver. We first meet Selvi at a girls’ shelter in 2004 – timid, soft-spoken, a fresh runaway from a difficult life. Over a ten-year journey, we see a remarkable transformation as Selvi finds her voice and defies all expectations – learning to drive, starting her own taxi company, leading educational seminars, and much more. This character-driven story highlights the challenges that millions of devalued women and girls in India face. In a society where women are often considered expendable or worthless, Selvi is exceptional – a charming, strong, and utterly courageous young woman who moves beyond the pain she’s experienced to create a new life.

The Prospect Park Women’s Softball League ("PPWSL") was formed in Brooklyn, New York in 1981 with a mission to welcome all women to play regardless of prior experience. The founders had a simple yet radical vision; to support and encourage women to participate in a sports league built on acceptance and instruction. The PPWSL continues to be a place where women meet across differences of race, economic class, sexual orientation, education, religion, and gender identity to play softball. Grounders is a documentary film that takes an intimate look at this league and the community that has formed around it. During the course of production some themes emerged: the impact of Title IX, how messages women received in their families of origin impacts their relationship to sports and their bodies, the importance of belonging to a team, and the empowerment gained from being part of a woman-led community. For some, playing has a therapeutic effect of undoing negative experiences endured as girls during schoolyard recess. For some being out on the softball field has always been a place of empowerment and joy. For every woman playing there is an obstacle to overcome, but once they get out to the field and play it all seems to make sense.

With unprecedented access, the Indigo Girls documentary brings to life the songwriting and storytelling of music that transformed a generation. Combining exclusive archival, intimate vérité, and scripted live-action magical realism, the film invites viewers into the lives of one of the most iconic folk-rock bands in America. After sharing a childhood outside of Atlanta, Georgia, Amy Ray and Emily Saliers have been making music together for over 30 years, starting with their friendship in high school choir. Despite their contrasting personalities, the two quickly became famous for their ability to harmonize. In 1989, their self-titled debut album became a breakout hit, and Amy and Emily found themselves sidelined by an industry eager to define them – as activists, lesbians, Southerners – and wholeheartedly embraced by devoted fans who connected with their unique sound and emotional lyrics. Across decades of political turmoil, the Indigo Girls consistently took a stand for indigenous rights, racial justice, LGBTQ dignity, and climate change – through their music, by speaking out publicly, and in their private actions. By celebrating the legacy of a duo who never quite got their due, this film lifts up the powerful charisma of their integrity, vulnerability, and harmony. Moving between their coming of age memories as gay women in the South, their sudden rise to fame, and the beauty and friction of aging, the film examines identity, legacy, and the healing power of music through an intimate, character-driven film about legendary musicians Amy Ray and Emily Saliers.

Couple KELLY and ROSEANNE are living their “best life”—dual income, no kids, rescue dog, house upstate. They’re a Brooklyn cliche; until Kelly resolves to get gender affirmation surgery and new legislation presents Roseanne with a one-year window to take legal action against the man who sexually abused her as a teen. Now Kelly and Roseanne both must make intimate sacrifices to reclaim their identity, and support each other in the quest for wholeness. THE SUM OF OUR PARTS follows the couple’s individual, yet intertwining journeys as they search for answers and forge a commitment to survive the biggest transformation of their lives.

Wollongong, New South Wales - 1980: Denied jobs at the steelworks — the city’s main employer — working-class/migrant women refused to accept discrimination. They began a campaign for the right to work that lasted for fourteen years. Their battle with BHP, the country’s richest and most powerful company, took them from the factory gate to the highest court in the land and changed the rules for women and men throughout Australia. In Women of Steel, directed by campaign leader Robynne Murphy, they tell their personal stories for the first time on film. The result is an exciting and often humorous tale of how a bunch of ordinary women stuck together and did what no one believed they could do — they subdued a giant!

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.

As human beings, we all face the same catch-22: Prompted by a natural defense mechanism, we’re all afraid of those who are different, but ironically, we’re also all scared of being rejected for being different. No one knows this better than Larry, a man who was born with hypertrichosis, an extremely rare condition that has him completely covered by thick hair. But even though the other members of his family with the condition taught him to hide behind masks, Larry chose from a very early age to celebrate being different and used his unique physicality to join the circus so he could help his impoverished family. His quest for a better life led him to build a business and a new family in the U.S., bringing new challenges that will blend into one another to bring this man who has always been passionate about empowering those who feel different to a personal crossroad: Pressured by his wife, he’ll have to decide whether to risk having a child who could inherit his condition while he struggles with the country’s growing fear of immigrants and a sudden risk of deportation that will bring up his anxiety about going back to a country that now feels foreign to him to confront his family’s depression about their condition, which he thought he’d left behind. Through this personal journey, Larry, the epitome of being different, will discover whether it is truly possible for him and others to overcome our human fear of otherness.

At the intersection of the northern Mexico desert and the plains of Southwest Texas exists a symbiotic community. Here, people’s lives are spread across the margins of two countries, connected by a bridge and a river that they all travel. Following a journalist capturing the changing political landscape, a lone crusader promoting international kayaking while the local rag-tag kids splash by the river banks, a mother straddling a life in two countries to keep her family together, and the quotidian moments of the lives lived in between two nations and their cultures, The In Between offers an intimate portrait of a place and its people at the heart of Mexican-American identity.

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.

Hunting in Wartime profiles Tlingit veterans from Hoonah, Alaska who saw combat during the Vietnam War. The veterans talk about surviving trauma, relating to Vietnamese civilians, readjusting to civilian life, and serving a government that systematically oppresses native people. Their stories give an important human face to the combat soldier and show the lasting effects of war on individuals, families and communities. Hunting in Wartime premiered on National PBS last year and won the Big Sky Award at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism in Documentary and the Excellence in Documentary Filmmaking Award at the Inwood Film Festival in NYC. The film has so far screened in over twenty-five venues including the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival, The National Archives, the American Indian Film Festival, the Hanoi Cinematheque and the Cambodia International Film Festival.

A nuanced look at how two communities of color navigate an uneven criminal justice system, anchored by one polarizing New York City case.

In the 1980s, one woman had the audacious vision that middle school should embrace the awkwardness and energy of 10-14 yrs old, rather than try to wrangle students into submission. Thirty-three years later her wildly unconventional recipe for building flexibility, self-reliance, and bold acceptance of difference relentlessly produces well-adjusted, academically successful students. Could the confounding strategies of this school be an antidote for the rising anxiety and distress we see in early adolescents across the country? Middle School 243 tells the story of four students and their friends as they navigate one year of middle school chock full of confusion, humor, angst, and joy. Together the four children represent the arc of middle school and the developmental odyssey that is early adolescence.

As a child of a military family, I am fascinated with military parachutes—a seemingly fragile material that holds the weight of a human body in mid-air. The beauty and the draw of the parachute is the beginning of a look into its creation, its use, and its cultural meaning. It leads me to ask, “Whose hands made this object?” My question sends me on a journey through Ireland and Northern Ireland, unfolding a much larger story than my original inquiry. My search leads me to Margaret, a Northern Irish Protestant who sewed the seams of linen parachutes during the Second World War. I also meet Ruby, a Protestant linen mill worker from Belfast, and then Joan, Elsie, and Eileen, three Irish Catholic soldiers in the British Army (ATS) from Co. Cork, and finally Jane, an Irish Catholic nurse in London from Co. Clare. A story about borders, identity, and cultures in transition, Seams is a complex look at the Anglo-Irish definition of “enemy” and the deep-seated religious, national, and economic divides of two fledgling societies at odds with each other during a global war. The women’s testimonies of the horrors of the Second World War, of the tragedy of the Northern Irish Troubles, and of the slow progression of peace over decades visually unfold through portraiture, archival footage, poetic live-action shots of landscapes and buildings, and hand-drawn stop-motion animation made with tea and ink on Irish linen.

While you may not know his name, chances are high you know his work. Laurie Olin is responsible for many of the most iconic and beloved parks, gardens and public spaces in the country, including the Getty Center gardens, Battery Park City, Columbus Circle, the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden, the Washington Monument grounds, Bryant Park, Mission Bay, and Independence Mall to name a few. But his imprint on cityscapes extends all over the globe. Olin’s motivation has always come from the social aspects of urban design, working passionately to keep cities viable for all citizens with a special focus on the economically marginalized. Over the course of a career spanning fifty years, Olin has aspired to create a level playing field—a more democratic, egalitarian society through shared public spaces. Given the disproportionate growth of the world’s largest metropolises with more people than ever before being born, living and dying in cities, Olin and his collaborators like Frank Gehry, urge us to take a closer look at the health and survival of our cities. They reveal how our sense of place is either degraded diminished through overbuilding and neglect, or enhanced through purposeful design and social encounter. Olin's life story will become a launching pad for the exploration of themes and ideas about the world in which we live: the overwhelming disconnect with nature, the effects of population explosion, the failed promise of the suburbs, the global water and climate crisis, and building economically-driven environments instead of human ones.

The Super d! Show videos are short form narratives and all the actors are kids with learning disabilities. The style is relatable, the themes are universal, and the kids are instantly likable and seriously funny. The narrative skits “trigger’ discussions about sensitive subjects. Digital & hands-on activities extend learning through participation. The Super d! Show web series target audience is kids age 7-12 years old and supports the growth of essential traits for achievement and well-being of LD kids in this age group.