Film Funding in the Fall: SFFILM / Rainin Filmmaking Grant Finalists Announced

An exciting group of 14 indie narrative feature projects has been just been selected by the SFFILM Makers team as finalists for the Fall 2017 round of SFFILM / Rainin Filmmaking Grants. The contenders include a few filmmakers who have received SFFILM support in the past — like H.P. Mendoza, Joe Talbot, and Maris Curran — along with several newcomers to the SFFILM family.

The winning projects, which will split $250,000 in this fall round, will be announced in just over a month. In the meantime, get to know this talented group of finalists!

As always, find out more about the filmmakers services provided by SFFILM Makers at sffilm.org/makers.

SPRING 2017 SFFILM / RAININ FILMMAKING GRANT FINALISTS

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American Babylon
Yvan Iturriaga, writer/director — screenwriting

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American Babylon is a gripping tale of love and revolution set in the gritty streets of Oakland, California in the months leading up to 9/11.

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Bitter Melon
H.P. Mendoza, writer/director — post-production

A Filipino-American family reunites in San Francisco for a Christmas party only to discover that one of the sons, Troy, is ruling the house with fear and violence. What starts as a light holiday party turns dark as the youngest son, Declan, masterminds a plan to murder the physically and emotionally abusive Troy.

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Fremont
Babak Jalali, writer/director; Carolina Cavalli, co-writer; Marjaneh Moghimi, producer — development

Troubled, edgy, unconventional Donya — an Afghani translator formerly working for the US military — now spends her days writing fortunes for a Chinese fortune cookie factory in San Francisco. As she struggles to put her life back in order, in a moment of sudden revelation, she sends out a message, wrapped in a fortune cookie — an act that sends her on an odyssey of deceit, mystery, and redemption.

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The House without Windows
Ani Simon-Kennedy, writer/director — screenwriting

Based on true events, The House Without Windows tells the story of a child prodigy novelist in the 1920s who resists growing up by retreating even deeper into her imagination, to tragic consequences. Her triple disappearance — in real life at the age of 25, in her first novel, and, finally, from the pages of history — stands in stark contrast to her erstwhile fame as America’s next great writer.

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Jules of Light and Dark
Daniel Laabs, writer/director; Jeff Walker, Liz Cardenas Franke, and Russell Sheaffer, producers — post-production

A young woman, Maya, struggles to rebuild her life after surviving a devastating car wreck with her girlfriend. The two are found and rescued by an oil worker, Freddy, who forges an unlikely friendship with Maya in this Texas-set drama.

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Last Black Man in San Francisco
Joe Talbot, writer/director; Khaliah Neal, producer — production

Jimmie Fails dreams of buying back the Victorian home his grandfather built in the heart of San Francisco. Now living in the city’s last, dwindling Black neighborhood with his oddball best friend Prentice, he searches for belonging in the rapidly changing city that seems to have left them behind.

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The Lusty
Silas Howard, co-writer/director; Antonia Crane, co-writer; L.A. Teodosio, producer — development

In the late ’90s in San Francisco, due to unsavory work conditions, a dynamic group of irreverent punk artist feminist strippers decides to resist sex-worker stigma and confront the exploitative labor practices at The Lusty Lady Peepshow, resulting in the first successful exotic dancers’ union in the world.

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Me, My Mom and Sharmila
Fawzia Mirza, writer/director; Terrie Samundra producer/co-writer — screenwriting

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A queer, Pakistani teen, her Muslim immigrant mother, and a Bollywood heroine’s destinies intertwine in this bittersweet coming of age tale.

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Monsters and Men
Reinaldo Marcus Green, director; Josh Penn and Elizabeth Lodge Stepp. producers — post-production

Monsters and Men is an interwoven narrative about police violence, racial profiling, and the power of perspective. The story is told in three chapters, each shifting perspective to different protagonists who are from the same Brooklyn neighborhood: first, a man who captures an act of police violence on his cellphone, then, an African-American police officer working in the precinct, and finally, a high-school baseball phenom.

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Mountain Rest
Alexandra Eaton, writer/director; Marcia Mayer, Fernando Loureiro, and Roberto Vasconcellos, producers — post-production

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After sequestering herself to a small mountain town, an aging actress calls her estranged daughter and granddaughter home for reconciliation and one final celebration.

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Mr. Rob
Fawaz Al-Matrouk, writer/director — screenwriting

The true story of Rob Lawrie, an ex-soldier who left his family in England to help migrants at the infamous Jungle refugee camp in France. Lawrie risked everything to rescue a four-year-old girl, entrusted to him by her father, but was arrested and charged with human smuggling.

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Nina
Eva Vives, director; Natalie Qasabian, Eric Fleischman, and Sean Tabibian producers — post-production

Just as Nina Geld’s brilliant and angry stand-up comedy kicks her career into high gear, her romantic life gets complicated, forcing her to reckon with what it means to be creative, authentic, and a woman in today’s culture.

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Raja
Deepak Rauniyar, writer/director — screenwriting

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Raja is a socially-rooted police procedural, a race-against-time thriller, as well as a portrait of Nepal — a complex society on the edge of a new future.

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Selene
Maris Curran, writer/director/producer; Jon Coplon and Marcia Mayer, producers — development

Selene fears she has laryngitis again. On a routine doctor visit to get antibiotics, she is diagnosed with a rare condition that leaves her permanently voiceless. As her world turns upside down and she struggles to communicate and adapt, she discovers that this limitation leads to the opening of a new world.

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SFFILM, in partnership with the Kenneth Rainin Foundation, is the largest granting body for independent narrative feature films in the United States. The SFFILM / Rainin Filmmaking Grant program has funded more than 50 projects since its inception, including Geremy Jasper’s Sundance breakthrough Patti Cake$, which closed the 2017 Cannes Director’s Fortnight program, ahead of its summer release; Alex and Andrew Smith’s Walking Out starring Matt Bomer and Josh Wiggins, which premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival; Chloé Zhao’s Songs My Brothers Taught Me, which screened at Sundance and Cannes in 2015; Short Term 12, Destin Cretton’s sophomore feature which won both the Narrative Grand Jury Award and Audience Award at South by Southwest 2013; Ryan Coogler’s debut feature Fruitvale Station, which won the 2014 Film Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature, the Un Certain Regard Avenir Prize at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, and both the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award in the narrative category at Sundance 2013; and Ben Zeitlin’s debut phenomenon Beasts of the Southern Wild, which won Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize and Cannes’ Camera d’Or in 2012 and earned four Academy Award nominations (including Best Picture).

For more info, visit sffilm.org/makers.

Meet the winners of the 2017 SFFILM Documentary Film Fund Grants

Six compelling nonfiction film projects have been awarded 2017 Documentary Film Fund grants, which support feature-length docs in the post-production phase. This year’s fund has increased to an impressive $125,000, which will be distributed to the winning projects in early September.

Find out more about this and other filmmaking grant opportunities at sffilm.org/makers.

The panelists who reviewed the ten finalists’ submissions are Jennifer Battat, founder of the Jenerosity Foundation; Noah Cowan, SFFILM Executive Director; Caroline von Kühn, Director of Artist Development at SFFILM; Jenny Slattery, Associate Director of Foundations and Artist Development at SFFILM; and independent producer Corey Tong.
 
“We are thrilled to support these six filmmaking teams, each of which is telling an important story with boldness and passion,” the jury said in a statement. “This group of projects represents a wide range of artistic visions, subjects, and approaches to nonfiction filmmaking — from the intimate portrayal of an independent woman’s last days to an arresting journey into the surreal, futuristic city of Brasilia. We very much look forward to supporting these films as they evolve, make their way into the world, and leave their imprint on audiences, fellow filmmakers, and our collective sense of what can be achieved through the documentary form.”

The Doc Film Fund has helped several important films finish their edits in recent years, including Peter Nicks’s The Force, which won the 2017 Sundance Film Festival Directing Award for documentary and SFFILM Festival’s Bay Area Documentary Award, and will be released this fall by Kino Lorber; Peter Bratt’s Dolores, which won the 2017 SFFILM Festival Audience Award for Documentary Feature following its Sundance premiere; Jamie Meltzer’s True Conviction, which won a Special Jury Mention for Documentary Feature at the Tribeca Film Festival; and Zachary Heinzerling’s Cutie and the Boxer, which won Sundance’s Directing Award for documentary and was nominated for the 2014 Academy Award® for Best Documentary Feature; among many others.

Since its launch in 2011, the SFFILM Documentary Film Fund has distributed nearly half a million dollars to advance new work by filmmakers nationwide. The 2017 Documentary Film Fund is made possible thanks to an expanded gift from the Jenerosity Foundation.

2017 DOCUMENTARY FILM FUND WINNERS

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The Feeling of Being Watched
Assia Boundaoui, director/producer; Jessica Devaney, producer — $25,000

When a filmmaker investigates rumors of surveillance in her Arab-American neighborhood in Chicago, she uncovers one of the largest FBI terrorism probes conducted before 9/11 and reveals its enduring impact on the community.

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Hale County, This Morning, This Evening
RaMell Ross, director; Joslyn Barnes and Su Kim, producers — $15,000

What is the experience of coming-of-age in the Black Belt region of the US? This film presents the lives of two young men in a series of visual movements that replace narrative arc with orchestral form.

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Heaven Through the Back Door
Anna Fitch and Banker White, co-directors/producers; Sara Dosa, producer — $20,000

Heaven Through the Backdoor is a contemplative documentary that tells the story of Yo (Yolanda Shae), a fiercely independent 88-year old woman whose unique brand of individualist feminism impacts how she chooses to live in the final years of her life. (Former SFFILM FilmHouse Resident)

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How to Have an American Baby
Leslie Tai, director/producer; Jillian Schultz, co-producer — $20,000

There is a city in Southern California that abounds with pregnant women from China. Told through multiple perspectives, How to Have an American Baby is a kaleidoscopic voyage behind the closed doors of the Chinese birth tourism industry. (SFFILM FilmHouse resident; SFFILM fiscally sponsored filmmaker; Bay Area-based project)

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A Machine to Live In
Yoni Goldstein and Meredith Zielke, co-directors; Sebastian Alvarez, producer; Andrew Benz, co-producer — $20,000

Hovering over what remains of Brazil’s modernist future, this film looks at how social control, rational design, and space-age architecture gave rise to a vast landscape of transcendental and mystical utopias. (Bay Area–based project)

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Midnight Family
Luke Lorentzen, director; Kellen Quinn, producer; Daniela Alatorre and Elena Fortes, co-producers — $25,000

In Mexico City, 16-year-old Juan Ochoa struggles to legitimize his family’s unlicensed ambulance business, as corrupt police in the neighborhood begin to target this cutthroat industry.

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For more news on SFFILM grant, fellowship, and residency opportunities, visit sffilm.org/makers.

That’s a Wrap: Young Filmmakers Camp 2017

by Tom Winterbottom, SFFILM Education Program Associate

“Pretend you’ve got a few minutes with a famous face, someone who’ll be swinging in for an interview,” said Jason Wolos, the lead instructor of SFFILM’s Young Filmmakers Camp, which wrapped on August 4. Even if it was just a practice activity, he wanted to give the students the chance to know what’s involved, from how to set up the room and preparing questions to getting sound levels right and adjusting the lights. Quiet on set, roll sound, roll camera, and slate.

The close-knit, impassioned group of teenagers immediately took to it. “I loved being able to work with other kids who are interested in films and filmmaking, and it was awesome to learn about things like lighting and sound, which I hadn’t really paid much attention to before,” one student reflected after camp.

They did one version of the mock interviews and then switched up roles, so that each got a chance to practice. Jason gave some tips: think about how his face is lit up, what’s in the background, how’s the framing. “You see how much goes into it?” he asked, and all the students nodded in recognition. “I never realized that it could take hours for a team to set up an interview, or that you might have to do the same shot over and over to get the right take,” said another camper after a hard day’s filmmaking.

SFFILM’s Young Filmmakers Camp, hosted at the Don Fisher Clubhouse of the Boys and Girls Club in Hayes Valley, was split into two sessions. The “Starter Lab” ran from July 10–21 and the “Advanced Lab” from July 24–August 4. Both sessions drew a dedicated and engaged class of students aged 13–17 that saw instruction, advice, and activities covering the key components of filmmaking from story development to post-production. In both sessions the objective was for students to conceive, produce, and edit final projects to be screened on the last day of camp.

Wolos and his assistant instructor, Mary Guzmán, designed and led the camp for the fourth time, aided by two fabulous interns, Katie Sharkey and Yuanyuan Zhu. The first two weeks, aimed at students with no prior experience, explored the fundamentals of filmmaking with introductory sessions and immersive activities. These included visits from guest teachers. Shane King, who shot and edited recent 2017 SFFILM Festival selection Tania Libre (directed by Lynn Hershman Leeson), came to talk about cinematography and how to shoot. Jason Halprin, a professor of cinema at City College of San Francisco, came to do two workshops on sound. In addition, students learnt about storytelling, lighting, and editing, as well as watching a series of clips and movies to better understand how to watch films. Helping them in that task as a special guest speaker for both labs was local film critic and journalist Michael Fox.

In the “Advanced Lab,” students consolidated and deepened their prior knowledge of filmmaking to take it to the next level. In one project, Nouvel Enfant (available below), the students worked with actors from the Boys and Girls Club to create a short narrative about a young person’s challenges in adjusting to life in a new city. “It was great to work with actors from outside our class,” Mary Guzmán said, “and it helped make the filmmaking feel more real and upped students’ professionalism.”

After it was all over, it was left for students to reflect on camp after their films had been screened to family and friends. “It’s by far my favorite camp I’ve ever been to,” one said, “and it taught me a lot about films and I also made more connections with filmmakers.” After the screening, one parent commented that the camp had “inspired a new contingent of passionate filmmakers.” Let’s hope so: keep your eyes peeled for these emerging storytellers in the future.

Our thanks go to the Boys and Girls Club of San Francisco, who hosted and supported our camp, and to Adobe who provided Creative Cloud licenses free of charge for our camp computers.

Meet the finalists for the 2017 SFFILM Documentary Film Fund Grants

Ten exciting new projects are contending for the 2017 Documentary Film Fund grants, which support feature-length docs in the post-production phase. This year’s fund has increased to an impressive $125,000, which will be distributed to the winning projects in early September.

Find out more about this and other filmmaking grant opportunities at sffilm.org/makers.

The Doc Film Fund has helped several important films finish their edits in recent years, including Peter Nicks’s The Force, which won the 2017 Sundance Film Festival Directing Award for documentary and SFFILM Festival’s Bay Area Documentary Award, and will be released this fall by Kino Lorber; Peter Bratt’s Dolores, which won the 2017 SFFILM Festival Audience Award for Documentary Feature following its Sundance premiere; Jamie Meltzer’s True Conviction, which won a Special Jury Mention for Documentary Feature at the Tribeca Film Festival; and Zachary Heinzerling’s Cutie and the Boxer, which won Sundance’s Directing Award for documentary and was nominated for the 2014 Academy Award® for Best Documentary Feature; among many others.

Since its launch in 2011, the SFFILM Documentary Film Fund has distributed nearly half a million dollars to advance new work by filmmakers nationwide. The 2017 Documentary Film Fund is made possible thanks to an expanded gift from the Jenerosity Foundation.

2017 DOCUMENTARY FILM FUND FINALISTS

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The Feeling of Being Watched
Assia Boundaoui, director/producer; Jessica Devaney, producer

When a filmmaker investigates rumors of surveillance in her Arab-American neighborhood in Chicago, she uncovers one of the largest FBI terrorism probes conducted before 9/11 and reveals its enduring impact on the community.

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Hale County, This Morning, This Evening
RaMell Ross, director; Joslyn Barnes and Su Kim, producers

What is the experience of coming-of-age in the Black Belt region of the US? This film presents the lives of two young men in a series of visual movements that replace narrative arc with orchestral form.

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Heaven Through the Back Door
Anna Fitch and Banker White, co-director/producers; Sara Dosa, producer

Heaven Through the Backdoor is a contemplative documentary that tells the story of Yo (Yolanda Shae), a fiercely independent 88-year old woman whose unique brand of individualist feminism impacts how she chooses to live in the final years of her life. (Former SFFILM FilmHouse Resident)

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How to Have an American Baby
Leslie Tai, director/producer; Jillian Schultz, co-producer

There is a city in Southern California that abounds with pregnant women from China. Told through multiple perspectives, How to Have an American Baby is a kaleidoscopic voyage behind the closed doors of the Chinese birth tourism industry. (SFFILM FilmHouse Resident, SFFILM fiscally sponsored filmmaker)

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The Judge
Erika Cohn, director/producer; Sara Maamouri, co-producer

The Judge provides rare insight into Shari’a law (Islamic law), an often misunderstood legal framework for Muslims, told through the eyes of Kholoud Al-Faqih, the first woman judge to be appointed to the Middle East’s religious courts. (SFFILM fiscally sponsored filmmaker)

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El Lugar de la Memoria
Juan Pablo González, director; Makena Buchanan, Jamie Gonçalves, and Ilana Coleman, producers

As economic and social conditions become dire, a wave of suicides among young people disrupts life in a small Mexican town. Through daily rituals and ceremonies amongst the people in this community, El Lugar de la Memoria presents a reflection on the reconfiguration of rural life in Mexico.

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A Machine to Live In
Yoni Goldstein and Meredith Zielke, co-directors; Sebastian Alvarez, producer; Andrew Benz, co-producer

Hovering over what remains of Brazil’s modernist future, this film looks at how social control, rational design, and space-age architecture gave rise to a vast landscape of transcendental and mystical utopias.

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Midnight Family
Luke Lorentzen, director; Kellen Quinn, producer; Daniela Alatorre,and Elena Fortes, co-producers

In Mexico City, 16-year-old Juan Ochoa struggles to legitimize his family’s unlicensed ambulance business, as corrupt police in the neighborhood begin to target this cutthroat industry.

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Pahokee
Ivete Lucas and Patrick Bresnan, co-director/producers; Maida Brankman, producer

Pahokee, Florida (pop. 6,094): one hour by car across Palm Beach County from the presidential opulence of Mar-a-Lago. Against a backdrop of industrial agriculture and economic isolation, high school students from different racial and cultural backgrounds forge a sense of meaning and community via elaborate and colorful rites of passage.

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Pigeon Kings
Milena Pastreich, director/producer; Michael Sherman and Matthew Perniciaro, producers

Keith London, the godfather of Birmingham Rollers, and his mentee, Choo Choo, survive life in South Central LA through their dedication to somersaulting pigeons.

Meet our new SFFILM / Sloan Science in Cinema Filmmaking Fellows

We’re excited to announce that two new filmmaking teams have joined our FilmHouse community to start their Sloan Science in Cinema Filmmaker Fellowships! Sloan Fellows are selected from an open call for screenwriters working on feature scripts exploring scientific or technological themes and characters. Each recipient gets a $35,000 cash grant and a two-month residency at FilmHouse, our bustling collaborative artist space, to write their screenplays.

Sloan Science in Cinema Filmmaking Fellowships are funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and are given twice annually. The program kicked off earlier this year with Michael Almereyda (Experimenter, Marjorie Prime) as our inaugural Sloan Fellow, to develop his upcoming screenplay about Nikola Telsa.

For more information, visit sffilm.org/makers.

Here are the details on our newest Fellows and their projects:

BELL
Darcy Brislin and Dyana Winkler, co-writers

After years of lawsuits surrounding the invention of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell is anxious to refocus on his true passion: the deaf. Relocating to Washington D.C. with his deaf wife Mabel, Bell begins to teach speech at the prestigious deaf college, Gallaudet. Sign language is quickly growing in popularity, but Bell develops a deep hatred for its existence, fearing deaf integration will be impossible. On the other hand, Mabel’s eyes are opened to a world she never knew existed, where deafness is a culture, not a handicap, and signing is a language, not an animalistic gesture. When Mabel discovers Bell’s ultimate plan — to eradicate deafness through eugenics — she is forced to choose between her marriage and the community she loves.

Currently based in Los Angeles, Darcy Brislin is a freelance writer and producer. She is the recipient of a number of fellowships, including the 2016 Sundance / Sloan Commissioning Grant, the 2017 Sundance Screenwriting Lab, the Kenyon Playwrights Conference, and the 20/20/20 Killer Films Residency lead by Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler. Her feature screenplay Crown Chasers is in development at UTA, with Maria Bello attached to produce. She is currently assisting director Ondi Timoner on the production of Mapplethorpe, a biopic about the acclaimed photographer, starring Matt Smith and John Benjamin Hickey.

Dyana Winkler is a freelance filmmaker who produces, directs, shoots, edits, and writes for hire in Brooklyn, NY. Clients include JP Morgan Chase, Under Armour, the US Open, Outside Television, TV on the Radio, and more. Her most recent fiction screenplay, Bell, was awarded the 2016 Sundance / Sloan Commissioning grant and participated in the 2017 Sundance Screenwriter’s Lab. Her first feature length documentary, United Skates, is currently in postproduction and has received awards from the Sundance Institute, IFP, Chicken & Egg Pictures, Film Independent, The Fledgling Fund, New York State Council on the Arts, and California Humanities.

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DARK WEB
Mark Eaton and Ron Najor, co-writers

When Maggie Hamilton takes third place in a coding competition at a hacker competition, her talent attracts the attention of a recruiter for a non-profit specializing in exposing corrupt companies. She joins their team, and works long hours in disguise on public computers, attempting to take down large conglomerates that are trying to take advantage of common citizens. After one job makes headlines and Maggie learns that the FBI is investigating, she decides to go “off the grid,” but not before she learns disturbing information about her employer and decides to do something about it.

Mark Eaton is a writer and director who got his start creating imaginative Super 8mm short films. He has written and directed commercials and music videos for a number of artists and brands including Blink-182, Tom DeLonge, Angels & Airwaves, Against Me, Good Old War, Macbeth Footwear, and James Coffee Co., bringing a careful balance of spirit and design to their collaborations. Eaton’s passion for visual narratives continued, directing the feature documentary Start the Machine and producing the independent sci-fi feature film Love. His feature script Dark Web was selected to be part of the Film Independent Screenwriting Labs in 2016.

Ron Najor’s first production was the feature film I Am Not a Hipster, which was an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival in 2012. He next produced the film Short Term 12, which won both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at SXSW in 2013. The film appeared on over 30 top-ten lists in 2013 and garnered a Gotham Award for Best Actress for Brie Larson and a Film Independent Spirit Award for Best Editing. Najor feature script Dark Web was selected to be part of the Film Independent Screenwriting Labs in 2016.