Meet the finalists for the Fall 2019 SFFILM Westridge Grants

SFFILM and the Westridge Foundation have announced the finalists for the Fall 2019 SFFILM Westridge Grants, one of the key narrative support programs offered by SFFILM Makers. The winning projects from this group of finalists will be announced in early October.
 
The Westridge program is designed specifically to support the screenwriting and development phases of narrative feature projects whose stories focus on the significant social issues and questions of our time. Providing support at these critical early stages protects filmmakers’ creative processes, and allows them to concentrate on properly crafting their stories and building the right strategy and infrastructure to guide them through financing and production.

The SFFILM Westridge Grant is open to US-based filmmakers whose stories take place primarily in the United States. The application period for the Spring 2020 round opens in late October, with a final deadline in late February. Find out more at sffilm.org/makers.

As always, in addition to the cash grants, recipients receive various benefits through SFFILM’s comprehensive and dynamic artist development program, as well as support and feedback from SFFILM and Westridge Foundation staff.

FALL 2019 SFFILM WESTRIDGE GRANT FINALISTS

all dirt roads taste of salt
Raven Jackson, director/writer; Maria Altamirano, producer — development/packaging 
Through lyrical portraits evoking the texture of memories, all dirt roads taste of salt viscerally and experientially explores the life of a Black woman in Tennessee, from her youth to her older years.

Baptism
Isabel Sandoval, director/writer; Carlo Velayo, producer — screenwriting
Ellen, a mixed-Filipino transwoman raising an adopted baby with her husband in Brooklyn, unknowingly gets reconnected with Rebecca, a working-class Caucasian woman who had given her up for adoption as an infant son. The two mothers ultimately realize that their frayed bond goes deeper than the biological.

Each Other’s Mothers
Lara Jean Gallagher, director/writer/producer; Aimee Lynn Barneburg, producer — screenwriting
After getting her period for the first time at a remote resort on the Oregon coast, a girl discovers a coven of maids harvesting her virgin blood.

The House Without Windows
Ani Simon-Kennedy, director/writer/producer; Kishori Rajan, producer — screenwriting
Child prodigy Barbara Newhall Follett skyrockets to fame when her novel is published in 1927. At the age of 25, she disappears without a trace. For the next three decades, her mother Helen devotes her life to finding her daughter. In this dual narrative, a mother finds the courage and words to illuminate her daughter’s extraordinary legacy.

Joy and Pain
Sanford Jenkins, director/writer/producer — screenwriting
An exploration of two families, through the lovers who unravel and bind them, as they prepare for a new child.
 
Molly Bling Bling
Juefang Zhang, director/writer; Kathleen I-Ying Lee, producer — screenwriting
In 1990s Chinatown NYC, a 30-year-old Chinese American jewelry shop owner pursues her passion in rap music, as well as a budding relationship with an African American rapper — all at the cost of estrangement from her Asian roots.

Paper Trail
Rachael Moton, director/writer — screenwriting
Unexpectedly hit with a huge debt, two Black students at a PWI in rapidly gentrifying North Philadelphia are forced to come up with money quick. They unknowingly find themselves at the center of a huge cheating scandal after they begin doing their classmates’ homework for money.
 
Queens
Alexandra Hsu, director/writer/producer; Jake Lee Hanne, writer; Rebecca Shuhan Lou and Sophie Luo, producers — screenwriting
The inspired true story of a shy Chinese-American girl from Queens, New York who finds herself thrust into the spotlight of the 1964 World’s Fair Miss Unisphere pageant, but struggles to find her voice in each of her worlds — her Shanghainese family, the Chinese-American community, and the new universe she discovers at the World’s Fair.
 
Street Manifesto
Aeden Keffelew, director/writer; Kim Harris, producer — screenwriting
Mose, a struggling graffiti artist in Harlem stuck in a dead-end job by day, looks to the streets to take back his dignity and his neighborhood by night.