SFFS SCREEN
Alamar
July 30–August 5, 2010
July 30–August 5, 2010
SFFS SCREEN
Making Plans for Lena
August 6–12, 2010
August 6–12, 2010
SFFS SCREEN
Vengeance
August 13–19, 2010
August 13–19, 2010
SFFS SCREEN
Army of Crime
August 20–26, 2010
August 20–26, 2010
SFFS SCREEN
The Two Escobars
August 27–September 2, 2010
August 27–September 2, 2010
SFFS SCREEN
Dogtooth
September 3–9, 2010
September 3–9, 2010
SFFS/Film Arts Foundation Documentary Grant
Overview | 2010 Recipients Announced
2010 RECIPIENTS
San Francisco Film Society and Film Arts Foundation announced on May 5, 2010 the winners of the Spring 2010 SFFS/FAF Documentary Filmmaking Grants, a total of $25,000 given to five filmmakers for documentary feature films in postproduction.
The panelists awarded $5000 in grants each to Christian Bruno for Strand: A Natural History of Cinema, Eugene Corr for From Ghost Town to Havana, Hayley Downs and Julie Kahn for Swamp Cabbage: A Dark and Sweaty Documentary, Dara Kell for Dear Mandela and David Weissman for WE WERE HERE: Voices from the AIDS Years in San Francisco.
OVERVIEW
Founded by independent filmmakers in 1976, Film Arts Foundation was an inspirational leader in the media arts field for more than 30 years, providing comprehensive training, equipment, information, consultations and exhibition opportunities to independent filmmakers across the Bay Area. FAF took thousands of filmmakers from the first step (education) to the final one (distribution) and covered everything in between, contributing to a culture of creativity and garnering a national reputation as a champion of independent film.
In August of 2008, the San Francisco Film Society launched a full suite of filmmaker services programs in the areas of professional education, career development, membership services, fiscal sponsorship, grant-making and information resources after signing an agreement with Film Arts Foundation, effectively assuming the stewardship of activities provided by Film Arts.
Thanks to the generous support of Film Arts Foundation and its board and honoring Film Arts Foundation’s support of documentary filmmakers over its 32 year history, the SFFS/Film Arts Foundation Documentary Grant will award a total of $25,000 for documentary feature films in post-production. This will be a one-time grant with awards given only in 2010.
RECIPIENTS
Christian Bruno: Strand: A Natural History of Cinema, $5,000
Strand: A Natural History of Cinema charts the rise and demise of moviegoing in San Francisco while revealing the transformation of postwar urban America, and examines this important aspect of collective culture by focusing on its richest period, the repertory and revival movement of the 1960s and ‘70s. The film integrates contemporary 16mm film, archival images and interviews with filmmakers such as Errol Morris, Werner Herzog and Walter Murch. naturalhistoryofcinema.net
Eugene Corr: From Ghost Town to Havana, $5,000
Since the summer of 2007, Corr has followed the lives of boys growing up in Centro Havana, Cuba, playing baseball for coach Nicholas Reyes, and boys growing up in West Oakland, California, playing for coach Roscoe Bryant. This April Oakland and Centro Havana players will meet and form one Oakland/Centro Havana team that will play against other Havana municipalities. Through the prism of sports From Ghost Town to Havana portrays the human struggle to wrest life, and even joy, from hardship and death.
Hayley Downs & Julie Kahn: Swamp Cabbage: A Dark and Sweaty Documentary, $5,000
Swamp Cabbage is a documentary about a half-Cracker (descendent of Florida pioneers known for their ability to survive in the treacherous Florida wilderness; often confused with but unrelated to the slur meaning ignorant bigot) stuck in Brooklyn who discovers that the bizarre backwoods-meets-suburbia Florida childhood she left behind is actually the key to her survival. The film weaves her story of love, addiction, illness, death and redemption with vérité sequences of Florida Crackers as they gig, trap, hunt, fish and cook, in close partnership with their environment, in the face of out-of-control development and suburban sprawl. Her tragicomic journey offers a new take on food, conservation and community. swampcabbagemovie.com
Dara Kell: Dear Mandela, $5,000
Dear Mandela chronicles events leading up to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa through the eyes of three young leaders of the shack-dwellers movement whose communities face mass eviction. Filmed over two years, Dear Mandela follows the leaders from the chaos on the streets to the highest court in the land as they resist the evictions and put Nelson Mandela’s promise of a better life for all to the test. dearmandela.com
David Weissman: WE WERE HERE: Voices from the AIDS Years in San Francisco, $5,000
WE WERE HERE: Voices from the AIDS Years in San Francisco is the first deep and reflective look back at the arrival and impact of AIDS in San Francisco and how the city’s inhabitants dealt with that unprecedented calamity. The relentless suffering that overwhelmed San Francisco in the 1980s and ‘90s has given way to a kind of calm and, understandably, a degree of willful forgetfulness. WE WERE HERE explores what was not so easy to discern in the midst of it all: parallel histories of suffering and loss, and of community coalescence and growth. Despite legitimate fears of being forced back into the closet by AIDS, the gay community was in many ways greatly empowered by the challenges that the epidemic presented.
Honorable Mention:
Tristan Patterson: Dragonslayer
Set against inland California’s decaying suburban and exurban communities in the aftermath of America’s economic collapse, Dragonslayer is a documentary portrait of a homeless young man who spends his days breaking into the backyards of foreclosed homes, draining the scummy water from their abandoned swimming pools and skateboarding, as a pure form of artistic expression that he refuses to compromise. On the verge of suicide, he falls in love with a 19-year-old college student who dreams of joining the Peace Corps. When she loses her childhood home, they decide to hit the road together in search of a better way of life. thesupplycompany.net
The Film Arts Foundation grant is a one-time grant and will not be offered in the future. We look forward to confirming another documentary grant in the coming months.
2010 RECIPIENTS
San Francisco Film Society and Film Arts Foundation announced on May 5, 2010 the winners of the Spring 2010 SFFS/FAF Documentary Filmmaking Grants, a total of $25,000 given to five filmmakers for documentary feature films in postproduction.
The panelists awarded $5000 in grants each to Christian Bruno for Strand: A Natural History of Cinema, Eugene Corr for From Ghost Town to Havana, Hayley Downs and Julie Kahn for Swamp Cabbage: A Dark and Sweaty Documentary, Dara Kell for Dear Mandela and David Weissman for WE WERE HERE: Voices from the AIDS Years in San Francisco.
OVERVIEW
Founded by independent filmmakers in 1976, Film Arts Foundation was an inspirational leader in the media arts field for more than 30 years, providing comprehensive training, equipment, information, consultations and exhibition opportunities to independent filmmakers across the Bay Area. FAF took thousands of filmmakers from the first step (education) to the final one (distribution) and covered everything in between, contributing to a culture of creativity and garnering a national reputation as a champion of independent film.
In August of 2008, the San Francisco Film Society launched a full suite of filmmaker services programs in the areas of professional education, career development, membership services, fiscal sponsorship, grant-making and information resources after signing an agreement with Film Arts Foundation, effectively assuming the stewardship of activities provided by Film Arts.
Thanks to the generous support of Film Arts Foundation and its board and honoring Film Arts Foundation’s support of documentary filmmakers over its 32 year history, the SFFS/Film Arts Foundation Documentary Grant will award a total of $25,000 for documentary feature films in post-production. This will be a one-time grant with awards given only in 2010.
RECIPIENTS
Christian Bruno: Strand: A Natural History of Cinema, $5,000
Strand: A Natural History of Cinema charts the rise and demise of moviegoing in San Francisco while revealing the transformation of postwar urban America, and examines this important aspect of collective culture by focusing on its richest period, the repertory and revival movement of the 1960s and ‘70s. The film integrates contemporary 16mm film, archival images and interviews with filmmakers such as Errol Morris, Werner Herzog and Walter Murch. naturalhistoryofcinema.net
Eugene Corr: From Ghost Town to Havana, $5,000
Since the summer of 2007, Corr has followed the lives of boys growing up in Centro Havana, Cuba, playing baseball for coach Nicholas Reyes, and boys growing up in West Oakland, California, playing for coach Roscoe Bryant. This April Oakland and Centro Havana players will meet and form one Oakland/Centro Havana team that will play against other Havana municipalities. Through the prism of sports From Ghost Town to Havana portrays the human struggle to wrest life, and even joy, from hardship and death.
Hayley Downs & Julie Kahn: Swamp Cabbage: A Dark and Sweaty Documentary, $5,000
Swamp Cabbage is a documentary about a half-Cracker (descendent of Florida pioneers known for their ability to survive in the treacherous Florida wilderness; often confused with but unrelated to the slur meaning ignorant bigot) stuck in Brooklyn who discovers that the bizarre backwoods-meets-suburbia Florida childhood she left behind is actually the key to her survival. The film weaves her story of love, addiction, illness, death and redemption with vérité sequences of Florida Crackers as they gig, trap, hunt, fish and cook, in close partnership with their environment, in the face of out-of-control development and suburban sprawl. Her tragicomic journey offers a new take on food, conservation and community. swampcabbagemovie.com
Dara Kell: Dear Mandela, $5,000
Dear Mandela chronicles events leading up to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa through the eyes of three young leaders of the shack-dwellers movement whose communities face mass eviction. Filmed over two years, Dear Mandela follows the leaders from the chaos on the streets to the highest court in the land as they resist the evictions and put Nelson Mandela’s promise of a better life for all to the test. dearmandela.com
David Weissman: WE WERE HERE: Voices from the AIDS Years in San Francisco, $5,000
WE WERE HERE: Voices from the AIDS Years in San Francisco is the first deep and reflective look back at the arrival and impact of AIDS in San Francisco and how the city’s inhabitants dealt with that unprecedented calamity. The relentless suffering that overwhelmed San Francisco in the 1980s and ‘90s has given way to a kind of calm and, understandably, a degree of willful forgetfulness. WE WERE HERE explores what was not so easy to discern in the midst of it all: parallel histories of suffering and loss, and of community coalescence and growth. Despite legitimate fears of being forced back into the closet by AIDS, the gay community was in many ways greatly empowered by the challenges that the epidemic presented.
Honorable Mention:
Tristan Patterson: Dragonslayer
Set against inland California’s decaying suburban and exurban communities in the aftermath of America’s economic collapse, Dragonslayer is a documentary portrait of a homeless young man who spends his days breaking into the backyards of foreclosed homes, draining the scummy water from their abandoned swimming pools and skateboarding, as a pure form of artistic expression that he refuses to compromise. On the verge of suicide, he falls in love with a 19-year-old college student who dreams of joining the Peace Corps. When she loses her childhood home, they decide to hit the road together in search of a better way of life. thesupplycompany.net
The Film Arts Foundation grant is a one-time grant and will not be offered in the future. We look forward to confirming another documentary grant in the coming months.
