The San Francisco Film Society and Kenneth Rainin Foundation
have selected 15 finalists for the latest round of SFFS / KRF Filmmaking
Grants. More than $300,000 will be awarded to one or more of the narrative feature
film project finalists listed below.
The Grants are awarded twice annually to narrative films
that will have significant economic or professional impact on the Bay Area
filmmaking community. Winners of the spring 2014 Grants will be announced in
late April.
Past Grant winners include Kat Candler’s “Hellion,” Ira
Sachs’ “Love is Strange,” Destin Cretton’s “Short Term 12,” Ryan Coogler’s “Fruitvale
Station” and 2013 Best Picture nominee “Beasts of the Southern Wild” by Benh
Zeitlin.
SPRING 2014 SFFS / KRF FILMMAKING GRANT FINALISTS:
Ad Inexplorata
Mark Elijah Rosenberg, director; Josh Penn, producer — postproduction
Captain Stanaforth is a NASA pilot alone on a one-way
mission toward the unknown.
Afronauts
Frances Bodomo, writer/director — screenwriting
In March 1965, the U.S. and the USSR rush to get the first
man on the moon. Thousands of miles away, the Zambia Space Academy hopes to
enter the race with their “spacegirl” Matha Mwamba. Based on true
events.
Betamax
Terrie Samundra, writer/director; Xandra Castleton, producer
— packagingWith the release of the first home video camcorder, a
teenage Sikh boy and a squatter punk girl become unlikely friends and
filmmaking collaborators. It’s complicated, but so is London, which is at the
brink of race riots and a punk youth uprising in the summer of 1976.
Black Metal
Kat Candler, writer/director — screenwriting
After a career spent mining his music from the shadows, the
lead singer of a metal band and his family experience a chain reaction of
turmoil following the murderous actions of a teenage fan.
Chickenshit
Jessica dela Merced, writer/director — screenwriting
In struggling Detroit, a lonely middle-school girl befriends
a daring group of boys who adventure through the ruins of the once majestic
city. With their help, she devises a plan to track down and capture the
arsonists responsible for a recent string of fires, including the one that
claimed the life of her father.
Clash
Mohamed Diab, writer/director — screenwriting
In the wake of the recent Egyptian military coup, Hayman —
a jaded, claustrophobic revolutionary — is stuck in an overcrowded truck with
clashing brotherhood and military supporters. Engulfed in hatred and violence,
he must learn to reconcile his love for Egypt in order to survive.
Five Nights in Maine
Maris Curran, writer/director/producer; Carly Hugo, producer
— productionA young African American man, reeling from the tragic loss
of his wife, travels to rural Maine to seek answers from his estranged
mother-in-law, who is herself confronting guilt and grief over her daughter’s
death.
The Fixer
Ian Olds, cowriter/director; Paul Felten, cowriter; Caroline
von Kuhn and Lily Whitsitt, producers — preproductionAn Afghan journalist is exiled from his war-torn country to
a small bohemian community in Northern California. When he attempts to turn his
menial job on the local police blotter into “Afghan-style” coverage
of local crime, he gets drawn into the underworld of this small town — a
shadow Northern California where sex is casual, true friendship is hard to come
by, and an unfamiliar form of violence burbles up all around him.
IO
Clay Jeter, writer/director; Jason Berman, producer —
productionOne of the last survivors on a post-cataclysmic Earth, the
idealistic daughter of a famous scientist races to find a cure for her poisoned
world before the final Exodus shuttle abandons the planet forever.
Mobile Homes
Vladimir de Fontenay, cowriter/director; Danielle Lessovitz,
cowriter — screenwritingA young runaway must decide between defending the life she
knows with the man she loves and protecting her young son from them both.
Oscillate Wildly
Travis Matthews, cowriter/director; Keith Wilson, cowriter/producer
— packagingWhen his disability check arrives much reduced, a hot-headed
young gay man with cerebral palsy is forced to confront the disability he has
let define his whole being.
The Other Kids
Chris Brown, director/producer — postproduction
The Other Kids takes a raw, intimate look into the struggles
of six small-town teenagers as they push through their final days of high
school.
Our Lady of the Snow
Tom Gilroy, writer/director — Screenwriting
When the Bishop decides to sell a gothic convent isolated in
the snowy woods, the elderly nuns living there begin to have ecstatic visions,
which he dismisses as faked. But as the visions spread to the convent’s
teenaged atheist cook, inexplicable supernatural events follow, with no one
sure of their cause.
Patti Cake$
Geremy Jasper, writer/director/composer; Dan Janvey,
producer — packagingPatricia Baccio, aka Patti Cake$, is a big girl with a big
mouth and big dreams of rap superstardom. Stuck in Lodi, New Jersey, Patti
battles an army of haters as she strives to break the mold and take over the
rap game.
Snow the Jones
Alistair Banks Griffin, writer/director/producer —
productionWhen teenage vagabond Lexi joins a traveling door-to-door
sales crew, she discovers a world much darker than the one from which she was
trying to escape.
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