July 12, 2012
The LEF Foundation is excited to announce 7 grants totaling $35,000 in development funds to New England-based independent documentary filmmakers creating innovative feature-length films, each with a unique artistic voice.
The LEF Moving Image Fund invests in projects that demonstrate excellence in technique, strong storytelling ability, and originality of artistic vision and voice. In addition to these criteria, the grantees represent a group of filmmakers at different stages in their artistic careers, from emerging to established makers.
The selected filmmakers address a broad range of topics while sharing a unique intimacy with their subjects. These filmmakers all bring a strong creative eye to their work. The grantees are:
Pre-production
 | | Liz Canner - Silent U. ($5,000)
Silent U. is a feature length documentary examining the social politics of rape on college campuses. In the United States, you are more likely to be raped while you are in college than if you don't attend school. You are also much less likely to go to jail if you are a student rapist. What are we teaching about sexuality, masculinity and power on our university campuses? Silent U. sets out to answer these questions. |
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 | | Sarah Colt - Co-op City ($5,000)
Co-op City is a David and Goliath tale of working class tenants, their landlords, and the banks that held the bonds on the largest housing development in the United States. Seen through the eyes of Charlie Rosen, who organized his 55,000 neighbors in the longest rent strike in American history, the film revisits this dramatic story of citizen action. |
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 | | Amy Geller & Allie Humenuk - Labor of Love (w.t.) ($5,000)
Labor of Love (w.t) drops you into the world of a gay couple, Sandro and Erik, with two daughters birthed by their best friend Rachel. Through intimately-observed moments, the film offers a provocative challenge to traditional ideas of what constitutes the "nuclear American family." |
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 | | Margo Guernsey - Councilwoman Castillo ($5,000)
Most elected officials are lawyers, business owners or at least have a college education. Councilwoman Carmen Castillo cleans hotel rooms. This film will follow her through her first term on the Providence City Council as she learns on the job. This is a film about our democracy: who gets to participate and on what terms. |
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 | | Jackie Mow & Laura Pacheco - Gone, Daddy, Gone ($5,000)
Ten years after Laura's father, Katherine, has sexual reassignment surgery to become a woman, she's lost her 'girl-power.' Laura's betting that a one-week class at Miss Vera's Finishing School for Boys Who Want to Be Girls will help her find her true self. This is a story about a daughter who takes drastic measures to help her father overcome an identity crisis and help herself discover why what her dad looks like on the outside matters so much to her. |
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 | | Cozette Russell - At the Edge of the Sea ($5,000)
This independent documentary travels to a peninsula in the Outer Banks where wild horses, the descendants of shipwrecked Spanish stallions, roam the beaches and have been living off marsh grasses for over 500 years. These horses are now in danger and face extinction. At the Edge of the Sea will tell their story, while examining this small North Carolina town's struggle to balance development and wilderness. |
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 | | Rebecca Wexler - Pirates in Parliament ($5,000)
Pirates in Parliament chronicles the rise to political power of a group of upstart German computer hackers through the eyes of Stephan Urbach, one of their leading members. As the film traces Stephan's personal journey from marginalization to power player, it reveals how a visionary outsider can revolutionize democracy with twenty-first century technology. |
In addition to this group of grantees, LEF will award another $165,000 to films in the production and post-production stages later in the year. In total, LEF will be distributing $200,000 in funding to documentary production over the course of our 2013 fiscal year.
The next grant deadline is 25 January 2013 for projects seeking production or post-production support. Please check www.lef-foundation.org for details regarding LEF Moving Image Fund guidelines and eligibility. For more information on the Foundation or its funded projects, please contact Program Director Sara Archambault: 617.492.5333 or sara@lef-foundation.org.
We extend our warmest congratulations to this group of grantees and our best wishes for success to all the projects reviewed for this deadline.