Meet the winners of SFFILM’s 2019 Sloan Science in Cinema Filmmaker Fellowships

Some exciting news for those who love great films about science and technology: SFFILM and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation have selected the recipients of the 2019 Sloan Science in Cinema Filmmaker Fellowships! Supporting the development of narrative feature screenplays that explore scientific or technological themes and characters, Sloan Fellowships are awarded once a year. Writer/directors Gina Hackett (A Bridge Between Us) and Josalynn Smith (Something in the Water) will each receive a $35,000 cash grant and a two-month residency at SFFILM’s FilmHouse residency space.

Fellows will gain free office space alongside access to weekly consulting services and professional development opportunities. SFFILM will connect each fellow to a science advisor with expertise in the scientific or technological subjects at the center of their screenplays, as well as leaders in the Bay Area’s science and technology communities. In addition to the residency and grant, SFFILM’s artist development team will facilitate industry introductions to producers and casting, financing, and creative advisors — investing in fellows from early script development stages through to release with the goal to further professional development and career sustainability.

Previous recipients of the Sloan Science in Cinema Fellowship include Michael Almereyda, to develop his screenplay about Nikola Tesla; Darcy Brislin and Dyana Winkler, to illuminate the lesser-known aspects of the life of Alexander Graham Bell; Mark Eaton and Ron Najor, who are exploring the darkest corners of the dark web; So Young Shelly Yo, telling the story of Yi So Yeon, South Korea’s first astronaut; and Erica Liu, who is developing a feature about a young mycologist attempting to heal a contaminated old-growth forest. These newest fellows are in good company!

A Bridge Between Us
Gina Hackett, writer/director
When the chief engineer of the Brooklyn Bridge is paralyzed in the early stages of its Victorian-era construction, his high-society wife Emily reluctantly steps up to act as his intermediary, courting jealousy and hostility as she blossoms into an engineer in her own right. Based on a true story, A Bridge Between Us tracks the building of a bridge and the collapse of a marriage.

Gina Hackett is a writer, director, and journalist based in New York. A Harvard alumna hailing from the Midwest, she is currently pursuing an MFA in Film at Columbia University and tells stories about women who make trouble. In 2019, she received the Katharina Otto-Bernstein Production Grant for her thesis film Delicate Prey, which she shot on 16mm film and is currently in post-production. Her most recent film, Amateur Night, had its world premiere at the 2019 New Orleans Film Festival and is currently on the festival circuit.

Something in the Water
Josalynn Smith, writer/director
 Leah, a teen girl living in St. Louis City, feels isolated and ignored after moving to a new neighborhood and being bused to a new school in an overwhelmingly white county. When Leah begins to observe behavioral changes in her little brother, through her research and experimentation she soon discovers that lead is the culprit. Now tasked with finding the source of the contamination and advocating for a systemic overhaul, a girl, once ignored, begins to find her voice.

Josalynn Smith is a Black American filmmaker based in New York. A recent graduate of Columbia University’s Film MFA program, her thesis short, also titled Something in the Water, received the Sloan Foundation’s Production Grant. Additionally, Smith is the recipient of the Jesse Thompkins III Screenwriting Award from Columbia. Her shorts and a feature documentary on which she served as a narrator and videographer have screened at St. Louis International Film Festival, Queer Fest St. Louis, Twin Cities Black Film Festival, and Williamsburg International Film Festival.

For more information about the SFFILM Sloan Science in Cinema Filmmaker Fellowship and other SFFILM Makers artist development programs, visit sffilm.org/makers.

Meet the Fall 2019 SFFILM Rainin Grant finalists

As another season of filmmaker grant applications comes to a close, SFFILM and the Kenneth Rainin Foundation have announced the finalists for the Fall 2019 SFFILM Rainin Grant, the flagship artist development program offered by SFFILM Makers. Ten filmmaking teams have been shortlisted as contenders to receive funding for their narrative projects in various stages of production.

SFFILM Rainin Grant program is the largest granting body for independent narrative feature films in the US, and supports films that address social justice issues — the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges — in a positive and meaningful way through plot, character, theme, or setting, and benefit the Bay Area filmmaking community in a professional and economic capacity.

Awards are made to multiple projects twice a year, in the spring and fall, for screenwriting, development, and post-production. In addition to a cash grant of up to $50,000, recipients are offered a 2-month residency at FilmHouse and benefit from SFFILM’s comprehensive and dynamic artist development programs.

The program is open to filmmakers from anywhere in the world who can commit to spending time developing the film in San Francisco. The Spring 2020 grant cycle will open for new applications in November; learn more at sffilm.org/makers.

FALL 2019 SFFILM RAININ GRANT FINALISTS

The Brooklyn Bruisers Head Down South
Bam Johnson, writer/director — screenwriting
A Negro League baseball team ventures down south for an exhibition game. Seeking refuge after being run out of the stadium, they find themselves trapped in a small town where the dead have begun to rise.

Could I be dead and not know it?
Ilinca Calugareanu, writer/director; Mara Adina, producer — screenwriting 
A police raid in the dead of the night and two weeks in a detention center end with Relu being deported back to his home country, where he discovers he has long been declared dead by his estranged wife. Relu abandoned everyone 20 years ago, ran away to a new land and never looked back, but now he is forced to face the consequences of his actions.

The Goddesses of Nanking
Carol Liu, writer/director/producer — screenwriting 
Two women crusade to bring to light the Japanese wartime atrocities committed at the Rape of Nanking, but their heroic efforts come at a great personal cost.

Miss Juneteenth 
Channing Godfrey Peoples, writer/director; Neil Creque Williams, Jeanie Igoe, James M. Johnston, Toby Halbrooks, Theresa Page, Tim Headington, producers — post-production
A former beauty queen turned hardworking single mom prepares her rebellious teenage daughter for the “Miss Juneteenth” pageant, hoping to keep her from repeating the same mistakes in life that she did.

Nessa
Lishan AZ, writer/director — screenwriting
After her sister’s sudden suicide, a misfit artist confronts her family’s secrecy surrounding mental illness as she searches for answers in the messages her sister left behind.

Noche de Fuego 
Tatiana Huezo, writer/director — post-production
Noche de Fuego depicts life in a town at war as seen through the eyes of three young girls on the path to adolescence.

One Hand Clapping
Shelly Grizim, writer/director; Deniz Buga, producer — screenwriting 
Two women are trapped in an obsessive relationship and only through acts of hopeless revenge is their great love revealed. In this temporal loop of conflicted hearts, an Israeli woman, a Palestinian woman, and a young child form an impossible family.

1791
Stefani Saintonge, writer/co-director/producer; Sébastien Denis, co-director/producer — screenwriting 
It’s August 1791 in the French colony Sainte-Domingue when a massive slave revolt erupts sparking the Haitian Revolution.

Stampede
Sontenish Myers, writer/director — screenwriting 
Set on a southern plantation in the 1800s, a young slave girl named Lena develops telekinetic powers she cannot yet control. Circumstances escalate when she is separated from her mother to be a house girl, in close quarters with the mercurial Master’s wife, Elizabeth.

Washing Elena
Maria Victoria Ponce, writer; Vanessa Perez, producer — development
Set in Richmond, California, Washing Elena follows 31-year-old Indalia as she attempts to solve the mystery surrounding her best’s friend’s sudden death. To find answers, Indalia must confront the realities of her friend’s surprising conversion to Islam, leading her to challenge her own biases and lingering guilt.

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.