Grantees 2019

A Gathering of Strangers: the Making of The Merchant of Venice

Hardin, Ted

Year Grant Awarded: 2019

A Gathering of Strangers—the Making of the Merchant in Venice chronicles the creation of and historical circumstances behind Compagnia de’ Colombari’s 2016 production of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice in the Venetian Ghetto where the word originated and where Shakespeare set the play's story. Read More

Squirrel Hill Falls

Hilary Brashear

Year Grant Awarded: 2019

The tale of a magical abandoned park, its local history, and a new neighbor curious to get inside. This quirky, DIY documentary, uses playfulness and fantasy to tell the story of a Philadelphia neighborhood mystery. Read More

Environmental Reporting Fund

Jacobin

Year Grant Awarded: 2019

Jacobin is a leading voice of the American left, offering perspectives on politics, economics, and culture. The print magazine is released quarterly and reaches 50,000 subscribers, in addition to a web audience of over 2,000,000 a month. Read More

Learning How to Say Goodbye

Landau, Caroline

Year Grant Awarded: 2019

In June of 2019, Caroline and photographer/videographer Oliver Rye traveled to Newfoundland to make molds of icebergs. This is an ongoing project that will continue into 2020 when the mold will then be replicated into glass and filled back up with its own glacier water. Read More

Mels Love Land

Lutz, Melanie

Year Grant Awarded: 2019

A loving docu-series that asks the question..."WHAT IF all your thoughts were loving? Using 21st Century media and spiritual technology Melanie develops a new language, a high vibratory broadcast in coherence with our collective heart, baring witness to a world of love. Read More

Justice in America

Margi Weir

Year Grant Awarded: 2019

Justice in America is a series of paintings that deal with the privatization and institutional racism in the U.S. prison system, military prisons, rendition, and immigration cruelty. The floor piece is about the tent cities where children were held after being separated from their parents. Read More

Frenemies

Martinelli, Mirella

Year Grant Awarded: 2019

Frenemies is a feature-length documentary that tells the story of the close yet conflicted relationship between the United States and Cuba from 1950 to 2020. How much longer can this small Caribbean island survive the longest embargo in history? Read More

ERA

Matheson, William

Year Grant Awarded: 2019

In the fall of 2019 I attended the artist residency program Taipei Artist Village with financial assistance from the Puffin Foundation. At TAV I created a series of video installations that explored ecology, mutation and collapse. Read More

Do you know who I am?

McCracken, Jr, James

Year Grant Awarded: 2019

Do you know who I am? is a photo-based project that includes installation, sculpture, video, printmaking, and found objects to create a narrative that reframes his experiences with systems of control and opens new possibilities of reform. Read More

Orchestrating Change

Me2/Orchestra, Inc.

Year Grant Awarded: 2019

Orchestrating Change is the feature documentary that tells the inspiring story of the only orchestra in the world created by and for people living with mental illness. Read More