2011 - 2012

Pre-Production

			*Chico Colvard - Black Memorabilia* ($5,000)** Black Memorabilia examines the culture around the collectibles and antiques that serve as reminders of the US's troubled racial history. The film is a portrait of the people who consume, manufacture and assume the identities of these objects.

			*Peter Frumkin - Alexander Dorner Film Project (wt)* ($5,000)** The Alexander Dorner Film Project (wt) explores the life of ground-breaking and controversial German art curator Alexander Dorner, who smuggled modern artworks out of Germany during WWII at the price of collaboration with the Nazi government.

			*Elizabeth Jones - Absaroka! The State That Never Was* ($5,000)** A hybrid documentary, this film revisits a disgruntled group of US Citizens who attempted to secede in 1939 to form a new state, only to discover that institutional change is more complicated than it seems.

			*Audrey Kali - Abattoir Rising* ($5,000)** Local farmers raise animals on pasture, out of cages and in good health – who would have thought a humane death would be so difficult? Abattoir Rising deals with the complex problem of inadequate and inhumane slaughterhouses.

			*Ann Kim - Salty Matrons* ($5,000)** In Korean, they’re called the haenyo – seawomen. Diving without tanks, they fearlessly hunt along the ocean floor for abalone, conch and sea urchin, but as the women age and the haenyo tradition loses its grip, this film asks: what happens when we can no longer do the thing that defines us?

			*David Redmon & Ashley Sabin – Downeast (wt)* ($5,000)** In an era of US post-industrialization when many factories and the jobs that accompany them are being exported, Downeast focuses on attempts to open a lobster-processing plant in rural Maine.

			*Nicky Tavares - Son of a Bug* ($5,000)** This experimental documentary explores the history of The Bugs, the first Pakistani rock band (formed circa 1964), and what it means to be Muslim and Pakistani-American, through the relationship between The Bugs’ former drummer, Jumshade “Jimmy” Muzaffar, and his son Shams-Tabraiz “Tabby,” a Texas-raised human rights activist and scholar.

Production

			*Ben Avishai & Ken Winikur - J Street* ($15,000)** J Street follows a progressive American-Jewish lobby group as it takes on the entrenched establishment, its founders struggling to build a movement while maintaining their ideals.

			*Chris Boebel & Christine Walley - Exit Zero* ($15,000)** In a narrative about the filmmakers’ family, Exit Zero offers an unusually intimate look at the lasting effects of deindustrialization in the United States and the ways that Americans talk – and fail to talk – about social class.

			*Audrey Kali & David Tamés - Abattoir Rising* ($15,000)** Former vegan Audrey Kali struggles with questions about the consumption and humane slaughter of locally raised animals.

			*Ed Pincus & Lucia Small - Elephant in the Room* ($15,000)** Two filmmakers of different generations turn the camera on each other to explore friendship, legacy and living with terminal illness.

			*Nicky Tavares - Son of a Bug* ($15,000)** Through the stories of members of Pakistan’s first rock n’ roll band, The Bugs, and their children, this documentary explores issues of religious and hyphenated identities, transnationalism, memory and oral history

			*Frederick Wiseman - National Gallery* ($15,000)** By exploring the day to day operations of the National Gallery of London, this film reveals the role of the curators and conservators; the education, scientific, and conservation departments; and the experiences of the Gallery’s visitors.

Post-Production

			*Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Verena Paravel - Leviathan* ($25,000)** A Moby Dick for the present, Leviathan seeks to capture how human, animal, and machine, and life and death, merge in uncanny ways in the world of contemporary commercial fishing.

			*David Redmon & Ashley Sabin - Downeast* ($25,000)** This complex and sympathetic portrait of America’s economic crisis delves into the difficulties entrepreneur Antonio Bussone encounters in trying to retain employees and keep his new lobster processing factory afloat in Downeast Maine.

			*Raouf Zaki - Desert Stars* ($25,000)** Desert Stars follows the journey of Father Nofr, a Christian hermit living in the desert, as he’s driven to confront the world again in the midst of the bloody Egyptian revolution in order to save his monastery.

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