SFFILM News

2021 SFFILM New American Fellowship Winner: Get to know Gerardo del Valle

SFFILM has announced the winner of its New American Fellowship, a program started in 2017 to support international artists who have made…

2021 SFFILM New American Fellowship Winner: Get to know Gerardo del Valle

SFFILM has announced the winner of its New American Fellowship, a program started in 2017 to support international artists who have made the United States their home and want to tell their stories through film. The first of its kind in the US film industry, the New American Fellowship is made possible thanks to SFFILM’s collaboration with the Flora Family Foundation, and provides a $25,000 cash grant and a FilmHouse artist residency in San Francisco to an independent director or producer who has recently moved to the United States. Designed to amplify the voices of international filmmakers and to champion their work in the US, the New American Fellowship seeks to support films by new American artists, ultimately providing meaningful and challenging experiences to public audiences. Previous recipients of the New American Fellowship include Kirsten Tan, Siyi Chen, and Carlo Velayo.

The 2021 New American Fellow is Gerardo del Valle, a video producer from Guatemala currently based in New York City. He is currently in the early production stages for his project The Past is Waiting Up Ahead, about a poet who revisits his past in attempt to understand how his journey across the US-Mexico border shaped his life.

“I am beyond thrilled and honored to have been chosen for the 2021 SFFILM New American Fellowship. Emigrating is a challenging experience filled with uncertainty, discovery, and growth facing the great unknown. Receiving support at this early stage of production for “The Past is Waiting Up Ahead”, my first feature film, is an invaluable opportunity that I look forward to taking full advantage, and a reminder of the importance of transnational voices and stories.”

Gerardo studied Communications and Media at Universidad Rafael Landivar in Guatemala and has a Master’s degree in Journalism from the City University of New York. He was a New Media Narrative Director Fellow at the International Center for Photography (2020) a UnionDocs’ Summer Documentary Lab Fellow (2020) and is an IDA Enterprise Development and a Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film Program grantee.

Starting his career working as a video journalist in Plaza Pública, the first online newspaper in Guatemala, he’s gone on to work on long-form documentaries and web-based projects. He has collaborated with Vice, Univision, the BBC, Agencia Efe, and NBC’s Left Field. His work has been recognized by the Inter-American Press Association (2014) the Fundación Gabo (2019) and the National Press Photographers of America (2019).

Congratulations to Gerardo!

For more information, visit sffilm.org/makers.

SFFILM Supported Titles Headed to Sundance

The 2022 Sundance Film Festival makes its return on January 20 and two projects supported directly by SFFILM Makers are in the lineup! We…

SFFILM Supported Titles Headed to Sundance

The 2022 Sundance Film Festival makes its return on January 20 and two projects supported directly by SFFILM Makers are in the lineup! We are thrilled that SFFILM Invest continues to fund projects that go on to Sundance and more, and beyond proud to see Reid Davenport’s project I Didn’t See You There from our inaugural SFFILM Rainin Filmmakers With Disability grant as both part of the slate and the winner of Sundance’s US Documentary Directing Award. We hope you get a chance to check out these inspiring projects at the festival this year and as they hit streaming sites in the future. Congratulations to all the films and filmmakers making their Sundance debut!

Here are our SFFILM Makers-supported films:

A Love Song
Next
(USA) Max Walker-Silverman, director; Dan Janvey, Jesse Hope, Max Walker-Silverman, producers
— SFFILM Invest

After unhitching her camper at a lakeside in the mountains, Faye finds her rhythm cooking meals, retrieving crawfish from a trap, and scanning her old box radio for a station. She looks expectantly at the approach of a car or the mailman, explaining to neighboring campers that she’s waiting for a childhood sweetheart she hasn’t seen in decades. When he does arrive, Lito and Faye, both widowed, spend an evening reminiscing about their lives, losses, and loneliness.

A whimsical romance, Max Walker-Silverman’s captivating debut feature shows an “American West” full of quietude, compassion, and introspection. It’s both naturalistic and vaguely surreal, blurring our sense of time and beauty, loss and vivacity, the grandiose natural world and intimate humanism. Career performances from Dale Dickey and Wes Studi bring an inescapable presence to people we don’t often see portrayed on film. They are gentle outliers possessed of resilience and existential spirit, seeking to process something elusive: a feeling of love for what’s no longer there. Like Faye turning her radio dial, they listen hopefully for the faint trace of a song.

Mija
Next
(USA) Isabel Castro, director; Tabs Breese, Isabel Castro, Yesenia Tlahuel, producers
— SFFILM Catapult Documentary Fellowship

Doris Muñoz desperately longed for better representation in the indie music she listened to as a teenager. At 23, she took matters into her own hands and began a career in music talent management, passionately advocating for rising Latinx artists. Her swift success transformed her into a pillar for a community of first- and second-generation Americans seeking collective acceptance and healing through song. When Doris receives news that forces her to reconsider working in music, she finds Jacks Haupt, an auspicious young singer eager to break out of her parent’s home in Dallas, Texas. Beyond the sweet moments of joy, glitter, and hope, Doris and Jacks share the ever-present guilt of being the first American-born members of their undocumented families. For them, the pressure of financial success is heightened because it facilitates green card processing and family reunification.

Mija is an immensely emotional and intimate portrait honoring the resilience of immigrants and their children. Director Isabel Castro’s debut feature constructs an ethereal love letter to their indomitable spirit in the face of constant instability, and heartily affirms that all humans have the right to shine and to dream.

I Didn’t See You There
US Documentary Competition
Winner of the U.S. Documentary Directing Award
(USA) Reid Davenport, director; Keith Wilson, producer
—SFFILM Rainin Filmmakers With Disability Grantee

As a visibly disabled person, filmmaker Reid Davenport is often either the subject of an unwanted gaze — gawked at by strangers — or paradoxically rendered invisible, ignored or dismissed by society. The arrival of a circus tent just outside his apartment prompts him to consider the history and legacy of the freak show, in which individuals who were deemed atypical were put on display for the amusement and shock of a paying public. Contemplating how this relates to his own filmmaking practice, which explicitly foregrounds disability, Davenport sets out to make a film about how he sees the world from his wheelchair without having to be seen himself.

Informed by his position in space, lower to the ground, Davenport captures indelible images, often abstracted into shapes and patterns separate from their meaning. But the circus tent looms in the background, and reality regularly intrudes, from unsolicited offers of help to careless blocking of access ramps. Personal and unflinching, I Didn’t See You There forces the viewer to confront the spectacle and invisibility of disability.

A Letter from Our Executive Director: Gratitude for Film in 2021

As we close out 2021 I am filled with immense optimism and much gratitude for the resiliency of the power of film. This faith comes from…

A Letter from Our Executive Director: Gratitude for Film in 2021

Back together at the Castro Theatre. Photo by Pamela Gentile.

As we close out 2021 I am filled with immense optimism and much gratitude for the resiliency of the power of film. This faith comes from seeing our wonderful audiences returning to theaters; it comes in the form of filmmakers creating new work; it comes in the gathering of community to celebrate, advocate for, and champion our artists and their work. If last year was about being knocked off our feet, 2021 was a year where we got back up and leaned into the blustery crosswinds of figuring out a new normal together.

First, this meant continuing and improving the online iterations of how we gather throughout the first half of the year — our SFFILM Festival drive-in, live online events and talks, the streamed films, and a robust online Education series for students and teachers.

Next, it meant providing resources in the form of residencies, granting, and fellowships all from a distance. This year brought new cohorts of supported filmmakers through our SFFILM Rainin Grants and SFFILM Rainin Filmmakers with Disabilities Grants, Dolby Institute Fellowships, our New American Fellowship, Sloan Science in Cinema Fellowships and Sloan Stories of Science Development Fund recipients , and soon-to-be announced Documentary Film Fund recipients and upcoming class of FilmHouse Residents.

We also got to pilot a new initiative. Inspired by our FilmHouse residency for working filmmakers, we launched a Youth FilmHouse Residency focusing on students who identify as Black, Indigenous, or as a person of color in grades 9–12 intent on exploring a career in film.

Most recently, after 18 months of distancing, we set forth a campaign to bring people back into theaters this fall. We were thrilled to find many audience members entrusting their first back-in-theater experiences with us and embracing the community that we all missed being around. These first forays back to in-person gave us hope and a bit of confidence starting with our SF Honors event with Siân Heder’s CODA to our fall documentary showcase Doc Stories. We held our annual fundraiser Awards Night in person to celebrate the wonderfully talented directors Jane Campion, Reinaldo Marcus Green, and Maggie Gyllenhaal along with brilliant actor Oscar Isaac.

Filmmaker Maggie Gyllenhaal accepting the Kanbar Award for Storytelling at Awards Night. Photo by Tommy Lau.

Jane Campion and Francis Ford Coppola, photo by Pamela Gentile

Director Siân Heder received SF Honors for her film CODA in August. Photo by Pamela Gentile.

Director Reinaldo Marcus Green, Executive Director Anne Lai, actor Jon Bernthal, and Director of Programing Jessie Fairbanks at SFFILM Awards Night.

Directors Isabel Bethencourt and Parker Hill at Doc Stories. Photo by Pamela Gentile.

Oscar Isaac accepting the SFFILM Award for Acting on Awards Night. Photo by Pamela Gentile.

Director Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson and Director of Programming Jessie Fairbanks at Doc Stories. Photo by Pamela Gentile.

Generous donors at SFFILM Awards Night. Photo by Drew Altizer Photography.

And just last weekend, we celebrated our Education’s 30th Anniversary with free access to families and audiences to see three special screenings at the Castro, capped by West Side Story and the irrepressible Rita Moreno.

EGOT and Icon Rita Moreno! Photos by Pamela Gentile

I say all this not to prove how much we did, but to remind us that we are not alone in this year of navigating the new normal. It is through the ingenuity, passion, and tenacity of our staff, our board, and our community of filmmakers sharing new work and audiences eager to receive it, that we are able to accomplish any one of these things. We love nothing less than to roll up our sleeves and solve the unique challenges presented at every turn, and help each other stay standing in the year that 2021 has been.

If there is any silver lining to the past year, we have gotten much better at not taking anything for granted. This includes you as part of our community. We can’t wait to see you in the new year.

Warmly,

Anne

Meet the Finalists of the 2021 SFFILM Documentary Film Fund Grant

The SFFILM Makers team has selected 13 outstanding non-fiction projects to as finalists for this year’s Documentary Film Fund (DFF) grants…

Meet the Finalists of the 2021 SFFILM Documentary Film Fund Grant

The SFFILM Makers team has selected 13 outstanding non-fiction projects to as finalists for this year’s Documentary Film Fund (DFF) grants, which support feature-length docs in the post-production phase. A total of $60,000 will be distributed to the winning projects in this cycle, which will be announced in early December. The Documentary Film Fund next opens for applications in spring 2022.

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

The SFFILM Documentary Film Fund supports engaging documentaries in post-production which exhibit compelling stories, intriguing characters, and an original, innovative visual approach.

The SFFILM Documentary Film Fund has an excellent track record for advancing compelling films that go on to critical acclaim. Previous DFF winners include Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh’s Writing With Fire, winner of Audience and Special Jury Prizes at 2021 Sundance Film Festival; Ljubo Stefanov and Tamara Kotevska’s Honeyland, which won a record number of juried awards at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for Academy Awards for both Best Documentary Feature and Best Foreign Language Film; RaMell Ross’ Hale County This Morning, This Evening, which won a Special Jury Prize at Sundance 2018 and was nominated for the 2019 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature; Liza Mandelup’s Jawline, which won a Special Jury Award at Sundance 2019 and is currently streaming on Hulu; Hassan Fazili’s Midnight Traveler, which won a Special Jury Award at Sundance 2019 and the McBaine Documentary Feature Award at the 2019 SFFILM Festival; Luke Lorentzen’s Midnight Family, which premiered at Sundance 2019 and won dozens of awards including a Creative Recognition Award for Best Editing from the International Documentary Association; Assia Boundaoui’s The Feeling of Being Watched, which has won audience awards at several film festivals and was broadcast nationwide on POV; Alyssa Fedele and Zachary Fink’s The Rescue List, which had its world premiere at the 2018 SFFILM Festival and was broadcast nationwide on POV; 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.

Since its launch in 2011, the SFFILM Documentary Film Fund has distributed nearly $1 million to advance new work by filmmakers nationwide. The 2021 Documentary Film Fund is supported by the Jenerosity Foundation.

Adams’s Apple
Amy Jenkins, director/producer

Adam’s Apple is an intimate exploration of what characterizes “maleness” for today’s gender-redefining youth, filmed from the perspectives of director Amy Jenkins and her teenage transgender son, Adam, each with a camera in hand. Vérité and artistic imagery chronicle the evolution of Adam’s identity beginning at toddlerhood, unveiling the ever-shifting family dynamic as Adam charts his path toward manhood.

Against the Tide
Sarvnik Kaur, director/producer; Koval Bhatia, producer

A tale of love, brotherhood and resentments against the backdrop of an adoring sea, which is turning adverse under the menacing effects of an all-pervading calamity called climate change.

Between the Rains
Andrew Harrison Brown, director/cinematographer, editor; Moses Thuranira, Samuel Ekomol, Ngaihike Napuu, producers

As a prolonged drought intensifies the conflict between two pastoral tribes over grazing lands in Kenya’s northern rangelands, an orphaned shepherd boy searches for a path forward while his village questions why the world around them is eroding.

Black Mothers
Débora Souza Silva, director/producer; David Felix Sutcliffe, producer

Violence. Outrage. Impunity. Repeat. Black Mothers follows the journey of two African-American women battling to break America’s cycle of racist police violence. As one mother investigates the cover-up of her son’s attack by Alabama police, the other channels her grief into organizing mothers across the country as they fight for justice.

Driver
Nesa Azimi, director/producer; Ines Hofmann Kanna, producer

Driver follows three years in the life of long-haul truck driver Desiree Wood. Taking on an industry where multi-billion dollar megacarriers conspire to make individual drivers anonymous and disposable, Desiree brings together an unlikely group of women to find strength, solidarity, and self-determination on the road — all while she fights to sustain herself as a long-haul truck driver.

Hakuchu Munayta
Augusto Zegarra, director; Claudia Chavez, Paloma Iturriaga, producers

A young indigenous man is trying to save a language from extinction. Fernando is an independent voice artist from Cusco, Peru who dreams of dubbing the animated classic The Lion King to Quechua, the language of the Incas. This epic endeavor of contacting Disney will make him re-examine his own identity, his role as a father, and test his commitment to his native language and culture.

Home Is Somewhere Else
Carlos Hagerman, co-director/producer; Jorge Villalobos, co-director; Carolina Coppel, Albie Hecht, Andrew Houchens, Susan MacLaury, Martha Sosa, executive producers

Accessing the American Dream is still not possible for all, much less those who come from immigrant backgrounds. For undocumented youth, their hopes for the future coexist with permanent fear of possible deportation. A fully animated 2D feature documentary, Home Is Somewhere Else is a window inside the hearts and minds of young Dreamers and the undocumented, amplifying and giving intimate voice to a growing community, still widely unrepresented and underserved.

Hummingbirds
Silvia Castaños, Estefanía Contreras, Diane Ng, co-directors; Miguel Drake-McLaughlin, Ana Rodriguez-Falco, Jillian Schlesinger, producers/co-directors, Leslie Benavides, producer

In this collaborative coming-of-age film, best friends Silvia and Beba escape the cruel heat of summer in their Texas border town, wandering empty streets at night in search of inspiration, adventure, and a sense of belonging. When forces threaten their shared dreams, they take a stand and hold onto what they can — the moment and each other.

Jose and Derek
Keira Sultan, director; Arielle Knight, producer

An exploration of community, memory, and image making, Jose and Derek interweaves 25 years of footage to tell the intergenerational story of a Philadelphia boxing gym and the mother-daughter pair behind the camera. Through the process of revisiting her mother’s unfinished film, director Keira Sultan is confronted with questions around image-making and authorship that alter the course of the film and catalyze reflections around her role as a director and outsider.

Mija
Isabel Castro, director/producer; Tabs Breese, Yesenia Tlahuel, producers

Doris Muñoz is an ambitious music manager whose undocumented family depends on her ability to discover aspiring pop stars. At just 26, she has already launched multiple Chicanx musicians, carving out space for her culture within a turbulent industry. Mija dives into the world of a young woman hustling harder than anyone else, because for Doris and her family, “making it” isn’t just a dream — it’s a necessity.

Time Bomb Y2K
Brian Becker, co-director/producer; Marley McDonald, co-director/editor; Penny Lane, Gabriel Sedgwick, producers

As the clock counts down to the dawn of the new millennium, the world mobilizes to face the largest technological disaster to ever threaten humanity. Told entirely through archival footage, Time Bomb Y2K decodes the truths and myths of the Millennium Bug in an electrifying race against time and technology.

Untitled
Sura Mallouh, director/producer; Laura Poitras, Yoni Golijov, producers

Two friends uncover a conflict that divides their already embattled community. Told from all sides, with unprecedented access to courtrooms, anonymous sources and community leaders, this observational film unfolds in real-time.

Weed Dreams
Mathew Ramirez Warren, director/producer; Barni Axmed Qaasim, producer

Black-owned businesses in Oakland, California try to break into the predominantly white legal Cannabis industry, through the nation’s first ever Cannabis Equity Program.

Meet the winners of the 2021 SFFILM Sloan Stories of Science Development Fund

Two screenwriters, Christopher Au and Jonathan Sethna, have been selected to receive funding through SFFILM’s Sloan Stories of Science…

Meet the winners of the 2021 SFFILM Sloan Stories of Science Development Fund

L to R: Christopher Au, writer; Jonathan Sethna, writer

Two screenwriters, Christopher Au and Jonathan Sethna, have been selected to receive funding through SFFILM’s Sloan Stories of Science Development Fund, which is part of a suite of screenwriting programs that cultivate narrative feature films exploring scientific or technological themes and characters. This artist support program was developed in partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the nonprofit dedicated to bridging the cultures of science and the humanities, and focuses on the adaptation of important scientific and technological discoveries to the big screen.

The Sloan Stories of Science Development Fund supports the screen adaptation of specific scientific articles and discoveries, catalogued in the Sloan Stories of Science Sourcebook as inspiration for filmmakers. These winners each receive a $10,000 cash grant and access to a two-day filmmaker retreat designed to provide guidance and mentorship from scientists, science and tech journalists, and film industry professionals to help them shape their storytelling vision; and from producers and legal advisors to help navigate adapting true stories to the screen.

Christopher Au, writer

Project

Airborne
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, a scrappy group of university research scientists take on skeptics, conservative politics, and the World Health Organization to uncover a startling truth about the nature of coronavirus transmission.

Biography

Christopher Au wrote, directed and produced the comedy series Bulge Bracket on Amazon Prime, which was featured on the front page of Bloomberg and Yahoo Finance, and was selected for the Gotham Week Project Market (formerly IFP) and SeriesFest, among others. His feature film producing credits include the neo-noir mystery Drive All Night, which debuted at Cinequest in 2021. As a commercial producer and director, Au won an Emmy for his work with Fox Sports Net. He was previously Head of Business Development for the iBrands group at AOL (now Verizon Media), overseeing strategic partnerships for its portfolio of media brands including TechCrunch, Engadget, Autoblog, Moviefone, MAKERS and others. He serves on the Board of Directors at the Center for Asian American Media, and holds film and business degrees from Yale and NYU respectively.

Jonathan Sethna, writer

Project

Fishes & Phages
When an antibiotic resistant Vibrio Bacteria outbreak threatens to wipe out local fish and oyster farms, the conservative fisherfolk of Greenport are forced to call in Dr. Manning Cesario, a flamboyant bacteriophage expert from the Philippines, for help. Culture clashes and science skepticism are tackled head on as Manning and his local liaison Jaxi, the town pariah, deal with more than just the marine contagion.

Biography

Jonathan Sethna writes contemporary narratives about the promise and peril of cutting-edge technologies and radical ideas. He lives in New York, but is proudly inspired, informed, and guided by the values and spirit of the Bay Area and the Jedi Order.