SF FILM SOCIETY CINEMA
SF FILM SOCIETY CINEMA
FILM SOCIETY CINEMA
FILM SOCIETY CINEMA
SF INT'L FILM FESTIVAL
Merrill Garbus (tUnE-yArDs) with Buster Keaton Shorts
Monday, April 23, 8:00 PM
Monday, April 23, 8:00 PM
FILM SOCIETY CINEMA
Releases
San Francisco Film Society and Kenneth Rainin Foundation Announce Winners of $35,000 SFFS/KRF Filmmaking Grants
Amanda Micheli and Jeff Zimbalist Awarded Grants for Their Debut Narrative Features
11/10/2009
San Francisco Film Society and the Kenneth Rainin Foundation announced today the winners of the Fall 2009 $35,000 SFFS/KRF Filmmaking Grants, given to two filmmakers for narrative feature films with social justice themes being made in the San Francisco Bay Area. The panelists who reviewed the finalists’ submissions are Peter Bratt, filmmaker, Chacras Filmworks and San Francisco Film Commissioner; Ellen Schneider, executive director, Active Voice; Jennifer Rainin, president, Kenneth Rainin Foundation; Michele Turnure-Salleo, director of filmmaker services, San Francisco Film Society; and Graham Leggat, executive director, San Francisco Film Society.
Due to the vision and generosity of the Kenneth Rainin Foundation, the panelists awarded the two Fall 2009 SFFS/KRF Filmmaking Grants to Amanda Micheli for Tomboy and Jeff Zimbalist for The Scribe of Urabá. The jury noted, “These two stories stood above all others, and we passionately felt the need to support them both. Though extremely different, they both wrestle expertly with complex subjects that will be sure to entertain just as they will challenge and provoke.”
The SFFS/KRF Filmmaking Grants support films that through plot, character, theme or setting significantly explore human and civil rights, discrimination, gender and sexual identity and other urgent social justice issues of our time. The grants, which run 2009–13, will be awarded in the spring and fall of each year. The total amount disbursed over these five years will be more than $3 million. The opening date and deadline for the letter of inquiry for the spring 2010 SFFS/KRF grant, for screenwriting, script development, preproduction and postproduction, will be announced next month.
WINNERS
Amanda Micheli’s most recent film, La Corona, premiered at Sundance in 2008 and was nominated for an Oscar for best documentary short subject before airing on HBO. In 2004, she premiered Double Dare at the Toronto International Film Festival and won the audience award for documentary feature at the San Francisco International Film Festival. Her first film, Just for the Ride (1995), won a student Oscar and an International Documentary Association Award and aired on PBS. Her other director of photography and producer credits include Thin, Cat Dancers, Brave New Voices, 30 Days, My Flesh and Blood and The Flute Player. For more information visit runawayfilms.com.
Tomboy
Ruby idolizes her father Frank, a retired NFL linebacker, and dreams of playing football herself. Frank teaches her to throw and catch as if she were his son. As a little girl, Ruby’s boyish ways are cute and almost socially acceptable. As she transitions into womanhood, however, Ruby faces an identity crisis. Tomboy is a full-contact coming-of-age story about sexual identity, female courage and self-determination set in the world of college women’s rugby.
Jeff Zimbalist is an Emmy Award–nominated writer, director and editor whose films such as Favela Rising have won more than 35 international film festival awards, have been broadcast on HBO, PBS, Channel 4 UK, ESPN and BET and have been theatrically distributed throughout the Americas, Europe, Australia and Asia. He has produced documentaries on third world development issues for clients such as the UNDP, the World Bank and the Interamerican Development Bank. He is a Brown University graduate and 2006 Ford Foundation grantee. For more information visit favelarising.com.
The Scribe of Urabá
Based on real events, The Scribe of Urabá chronicles the rise of the Nobel Prize–nominated Peace Community movement in Latin America through the personal story of a 14-year-old Colombian girl whose father is murdered for being a union leader at a rural Colombian Coca-Cola bottling plant. The girl’s life collides with that of an African American public relations executive at Coca-Cola’s U.S. headquarters, who is assigned to ameliorate controversy around the violent union bust.
The SFFS/KRF Filmmaking Grants support work by local filmmakers as well as attract projects of the highest quality to the Bay Area, providing tangible encouragement and support to meaningful projects and benefiting the local economy. In addition to a cash grant, recipients will receive various benefits through the Film Society’s comprehensive and dynamic filmmaker services programs (sffs.org/filmmaker-services).
For more information visit sffs.org/filmmaker_services/rainin-filmmaking-grants.
Kenneth Rainin Foundation is a private family foundation dedicated to enhancing the quality of life by promoting equitable access to a baseline of literacy, enabling inspiration through the magic of the arts and providing opportunity for a healthy lifestyle for those with chronic disease. The Foundation focuses its efforts on the San Francisco Bay Area and specific medical issues and utilizes its networks, resources and commitment to socially responsible business practices to support innovation, collaboration and connection.
San Francisco Film Society is a nonprofit arts organization dedicated to celebrating film and the moving image in all its glorious forms. SFFS year-round programs and events are concentrated in four core areas: Celebrating Internationalism, Inspiring Bay Area Youth, Showcasing Bay Area Film Culture and Exploring New Digital Media. The Film Society shows the best of world cinema year-round on its SFFS Screen at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas; presents the longest-running film festival in the Americas, the SF International (April 22–May 6, 2010); publishes a daily online magazine, SF360.org, featuring broad-ranging news and features on Bay Area film and media; annually reaches more than 8,000 students ages 6–18 with its acclaimed media literacy programs; and provides crucial support to the Bay Area filmmaking community through SFFS Filmmaker Services including FilmHouse Residencies, Fiscal Sponsorship, the Herbert Family Filmmaking Grants, Djerassi Residency Award/San Francisco Film Society Screenwriting Fellowship, SFFS Film Arts Forums and professional-level filmmaker classes.
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Due to the vision and generosity of the Kenneth Rainin Foundation, the panelists awarded the two Fall 2009 SFFS/KRF Filmmaking Grants to Amanda Micheli for Tomboy and Jeff Zimbalist for The Scribe of Urabá. The jury noted, “These two stories stood above all others, and we passionately felt the need to support them both. Though extremely different, they both wrestle expertly with complex subjects that will be sure to entertain just as they will challenge and provoke.”
The SFFS/KRF Filmmaking Grants support films that through plot, character, theme or setting significantly explore human and civil rights, discrimination, gender and sexual identity and other urgent social justice issues of our time. The grants, which run 2009–13, will be awarded in the spring and fall of each year. The total amount disbursed over these five years will be more than $3 million. The opening date and deadline for the letter of inquiry for the spring 2010 SFFS/KRF grant, for screenwriting, script development, preproduction and postproduction, will be announced next month.
WINNERS
Amanda Micheli’s most recent film, La Corona, premiered at Sundance in 2008 and was nominated for an Oscar for best documentary short subject before airing on HBO. In 2004, she premiered Double Dare at the Toronto International Film Festival and won the audience award for documentary feature at the San Francisco International Film Festival. Her first film, Just for the Ride (1995), won a student Oscar and an International Documentary Association Award and aired on PBS. Her other director of photography and producer credits include Thin, Cat Dancers, Brave New Voices, 30 Days, My Flesh and Blood and The Flute Player. For more information visit runawayfilms.com.
Tomboy
Ruby idolizes her father Frank, a retired NFL linebacker, and dreams of playing football herself. Frank teaches her to throw and catch as if she were his son. As a little girl, Ruby’s boyish ways are cute and almost socially acceptable. As she transitions into womanhood, however, Ruby faces an identity crisis. Tomboy is a full-contact coming-of-age story about sexual identity, female courage and self-determination set in the world of college women’s rugby.
Jeff Zimbalist is an Emmy Award–nominated writer, director and editor whose films such as Favela Rising have won more than 35 international film festival awards, have been broadcast on HBO, PBS, Channel 4 UK, ESPN and BET and have been theatrically distributed throughout the Americas, Europe, Australia and Asia. He has produced documentaries on third world development issues for clients such as the UNDP, the World Bank and the Interamerican Development Bank. He is a Brown University graduate and 2006 Ford Foundation grantee. For more information visit favelarising.com.
The Scribe of Urabá
Based on real events, The Scribe of Urabá chronicles the rise of the Nobel Prize–nominated Peace Community movement in Latin America through the personal story of a 14-year-old Colombian girl whose father is murdered for being a union leader at a rural Colombian Coca-Cola bottling plant. The girl’s life collides with that of an African American public relations executive at Coca-Cola’s U.S. headquarters, who is assigned to ameliorate controversy around the violent union bust.
The SFFS/KRF Filmmaking Grants support work by local filmmakers as well as attract projects of the highest quality to the Bay Area, providing tangible encouragement and support to meaningful projects and benefiting the local economy. In addition to a cash grant, recipients will receive various benefits through the Film Society’s comprehensive and dynamic filmmaker services programs (sffs.org/filmmaker-services).
For more information visit sffs.org/filmmaker_services/rainin-filmmaking-grants.
Kenneth Rainin Foundation is a private family foundation dedicated to enhancing the quality of life by promoting equitable access to a baseline of literacy, enabling inspiration through the magic of the arts and providing opportunity for a healthy lifestyle for those with chronic disease. The Foundation focuses its efforts on the San Francisco Bay Area and specific medical issues and utilizes its networks, resources and commitment to socially responsible business practices to support innovation, collaboration and connection.
San Francisco Film Society is a nonprofit arts organization dedicated to celebrating film and the moving image in all its glorious forms. SFFS year-round programs and events are concentrated in four core areas: Celebrating Internationalism, Inspiring Bay Area Youth, Showcasing Bay Area Film Culture and Exploring New Digital Media. The Film Society shows the best of world cinema year-round on its SFFS Screen at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas; presents the longest-running film festival in the Americas, the SF International (April 22–May 6, 2010); publishes a daily online magazine, SF360.org, featuring broad-ranging news and features on Bay Area film and media; annually reaches more than 8,000 students ages 6–18 with its acclaimed media literacy programs; and provides crucial support to the Bay Area filmmaking community through SFFS Filmmaker Services including FilmHouse Residencies, Fiscal Sponsorship, the Herbert Family Filmmaking Grants, Djerassi Residency Award/San Francisco Film Society Screenwriting Fellowship, SFFS Film Arts Forums and professional-level filmmaker classes.
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