Apr 20, 2011
Artist Development
The San Francisco Film Society and the Kenneth Rainin Foundation today announced that the application period is now open for the Spring 2011 SFFS/KRF Filmmaking Grants. The grants are given twice annually to filmmakers for narrative feature 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. Additionally, the grants support films that have a significant economic or professional impact on the Bay Area filmmaking community. The total amount disbursed 2009-13 will be over $3 million, including a total of $485,000 already awarded in the first four rounds. The letter of inquiry period for the fifth set of SFFS/KRF grants totaling up to $450,000 for screenwriting, script development, preproduction, production and postproduction opens April 21; the early deadline is May 13 and the late deadline is May 20.
Winners of the spring 2011 SFFS/KRF grants will be announced August 5.
For additional information, including guidelines and application, visit sffs.org/Filmmaker-Services/Grants-and-Prizes.
Due to the vision and generosity of the Kenneth Rainin Foundation, the SFFS/KRF Filmmaking Grants provide tangible encouragement and support to meaningful projects while benefiting the local economy. In addition to the cash grant, recipients will receive various benefits through the Film Society’s comprehensive and dynamic filmmaker services programs.
As previously announced five filmmakers working in various stages of production were awarded funds in the most recent round of SFFS/KRF grants:
Debbie Brubaker: 504, $15,000 for development
504 is the story of the longest takeover of a Federal building in American history and the birth of the disability rights movement. A tumultuous love story between a recently paralyzed fraternity brother and an angry intellectual activist with cerebral palsy unfolds against the backdrop of an historic sit-in at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare offices in San Francisco in the mid-1970s, which led eventually to the enactment of the first disability nondiscrimination law, known as Section 504.
Lynn Hershman Leeson: Killer App, $50,000 for development
A visionary doctor at a fertility clinic realizes that a patient’s DNA holds the key to the next evolutionary leap from homo sapiens to machine sapiens: beings that look human but which have an unlimited ability to absorb information. As the patient learns more and more, she becomes increasingly aware that greed is destroying Earth and decides to develop a killer app that will save the world and her newborn twins. lynnhershman.com
Christopher Mason Johnson: Skirt, $35,000 for screenwriting
Skirt tells the story of an idealistic political campaign worker who must decide whether to perpetuate a lie in order to help promote a cause that she believes in or set the record straight before the truth is uncovered and run the risk of undermining her campaign. thenewtwentymovie.com
Mike Ott: Teenage Wasteland, $75,000 for production
A young illegal immigrant who dreams of escaping her staid life in a sleepy desert town decides that the time to act has arrived when her impressionable best friend falls under the influence of his militaristic, vigilante older brother. She convinces him to leave with her and pursue their dreams in San Francisco. smallformfilms.com
Morgan Wise: Western Addition, $35,000 for screenwriting
Western Addition traces the lives of six African American residents of a crumbling San Francisco apartment building over the course of a single weekend in 1970 and the transformation of African American culture brought on by the second great migration of Blacks from the rural South to the industrial centers in the North. raremink.com
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.