LEF Foundation Awards $200,000 to New England Independent Documentary Filmmakers

The LEF Foundation Moving Image Fund has announced its ninth annual round of grants to independent documentary filmmakers in New England. This year, the fund made 16 grants totaling $200,000 supporting the creation of innovative documentary films expressing the unique artistic voice and personal vision of the filmmaker. Since its inception in 2001, the Moving Image Fund has supported over 200 independent filmmaker projects with more than $2,000,000 in funding.

A private family foundation dedicated to the support of contemporary arts, LEF was established in 1985. The Moving Image Fund began in 2001 with a focus on all genres of independent film, and was complementary to the Contemporary Work Fund, focusing on the contemporary arts. In 2009, the Foundation announced a strategic shift, ending the Contemporary Work Fund and focusing its efforts on the documentary film field. The Foundation intends to support fewer filmmakers with larger grants in order to have a greater impact on the production process, providing space and time for the filmmaker to create innovative work that influences other filmmakers, funders, and society.

For more information on the Foundation or its funded projects, please contact Program Manager Sara Archambault: 617.492.5333, or Sara@lef-foundation.org, or check the foundation website.
 
Pre-Production

Myles David Jewell, $5,000
The 14th Victim
A family drama revolving around the filmmaker’s grandfather, Detective Phil DeNatale, and his devotion to solving the Boston Strangler serial murders.

Sara Giustini & PJ Raval, $5,000
Gay Retiree Documentary (wt)
A film following a host of characters as the first generation of out gays, lesbians, and bisexuals begin to enter retirement homes and face new challenges in arranging end-of-life care.

Alfred Guzzetti, $5,000
History’s Children
In 1985, the filmmaker collaborated with Susan Meiselas and Richard Rogers on the film Living at Risk, about a Nicaraguan family during the U.S.-backed war. History’s Children catches up with their children 25 years later to trace their lives through time.

Dakin Henderson, $5,000
Grandmothers: Slow Medicine (wt)
A film exploring how three generations of the filmmaker’s family react to the complicated process of their elder relatives growing older and dying.

Brittany Huckabee, $5,000
Border Girls (wt)
A film following two young Nepalese women who operate a border surveillance unit in Southern Nepal: working alone, they rescue up to 200 girls every month from traffickers headed to India.
 
Kathryn Ramey, $5,000
WEST: What I Know About Her
The story of the filmmaker’s great-great grandmother, a pioneer who apprenticed herself to a doctor on a caravan, leading her to become a midwife and folk hero.
 
Rob Todd, $5,000
The Alternative Housing Project
A feature-length documentary exploring three types of planned communities: public housing, private planned communities, and prisons.

Production

Robbie Gemmel, $15,000
Cape Wind
A film exploring the Cape Wind project as the filmmaker grapples with the idea of a coastal community and its negative reaction to a clean energy project.
 
Ann Kim & Priya Giri Desai, $15,000
Match+:
A documentary telling the human story of HIV / AIDS through the lens of the growing movement for HIV-positive marriage matchmaking in India.

Ross McElwee, $15,000
Sherman’s Redux (wt)
A documentary about a fiction film being made based on a documentary – Ross McElwee and his camera follow the process and explore philosophical implications as Sherman’s March is re-made into a fiction film by Paul Blart: Mall Cop director Steve Carr.
 
Verena Paravel, $15,000
Foreign Parts
A feature-length video documenting the junkyards of the Iron Triangle in Flushing, Queens over the course of four seasons.

Amie Siegel, $15,000
Maria
A film exploring reality versus fantasy, fiction and performance, and how the role of the camera – and documentary – have changed a generation.
 
Jeff Silva, $15,000
Ivan and Ivana: Variations on Amerika
A documentary film about Ivan and Ivana, a young refugee immigrant couple from Kosovo who struggle with the seduction of capitalism and material culture in the United States.
 
Post Production

Lucien Castaing-Taylor, $25,000
Sweetgrass
A feature-length film about the dying world of sheepherders in the American west.

Chico Colvard, $25,000
Family Affair
A documentary examining the lives of three biracial sisters who survived years of sexual abuse by their father, and their capacity to forgive in order to maintain family relationships.

Mike Majoros, $25,000
A Very Old Game
A feature-length documentary focusing on the daily lives of a handful of Mongolians as they spend a year preparing for the 800-year-old Naadam games.
 
16 grants totaling $200,000.