The LEF Foundation has announced its 2008 Moving Image Fund grants awarded to 26 individual filmmakers, totaling $280,000. In addition to the project grants, two $10,000 Documentary Fellowships were awarded for a total of $300,000 in grants.


In addition to the 26 project based awards, this year LEF made two unrestricted grants to filmmakers under its Documentary Fellowship program. This program recognizes filmmakers for their ongoing body of work in the more traditional form of documentary and for their valuable contributions to the New England filmmaking community as a whole.

Following please find a list of this year’s awardees:

• PRE-PRODUCTION

Abigail Child
Can You See Everything From Here?
$5,000
A feature length experimental video that takes an intimate look at mainland China and features the Beijing Film Academy, local neighborhoods, and close-up portraits of a number of characters

Laura Colella
Liquorland
$5,000
A feature-length narrative based on the novel The Republic of Wine by Beijing-based author Mo Yan

Priya Desai
Match+
$5,000
A narrative documentary that tells the story of the growing movement for HIV-positive marriage matchmaking in India

Carla Herrera-Prats
Garden Variety
$5,000
A video essay that ruminates on the man/nature dialectic, focusing on Boston’s Fenway Victory Garden, the United States’ historical relationship with the natural landscape, and the politics of global agriculture

Jake Mahaffy
Free in Deed
$5,000
A feature length narrative that follows the struggles of a deeply religious man who tries to heal a child through faith, but instead causes the boy to die

Rebecca Meyers
Blue Mantle
$5,000
A film exploring the local history of Massachusetts coastal communities and their relationship to the sea, and the role of the sea as aesthetic inspiration

Robb Moss
Dogs 3
$5,000
The third film in a series chronicling five characters as they grow from young idealistic river guides on the Colorado, to middle age, and now the unknown territory of their impending older age

Abraham Ravett
Blues and the Abstract Truth: A Session
$5,000
An experimental non-fiction video that explores the complexities of orchestrating the inspired 1961 Blues & The Abstract Truth recording session led by Oliver Nelson

David Sutherland
Kind-Hearted Woman
$5,000
Third in a series of documentaries on rural America, this is a portrait of a Native American woman who struggles between saving her family and risking it all to help her Indian community and abused women

Jeff Zimbalist
The Scribe of Urabá
$5,000
A feature length narrative that tells the interconnected story of a 14 year old Colombian girl violently uprooted from her home, and a Coca-Cola executive who must protect corporate interests in Columbia

• PRODUCTION

Nancy Andrews
On a Phantom Limb
$20,000
A film using the filmmaker’s near-death experience in an allegorical manner to examine the implications and results of the human desire for mastery over death

Steven Ascher & Jeanne Jordan
Raising Renée
$10,000
The third in a trilogy of feature documentaries on American families, this film examines family dynamics through the eyes of painter Beverly McIver and her sister, Renée

Louise Bourque
Offerings
$15,000
A suite of four experimental films exploring themes of trauma, loss and longing

Chico Colvard
Family Affair
$15,000
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

Robert Fenz
Into the Light
$20,000
A filmic essay reflecting on Robert Gardner’s art, using the same tools and methods of filmmaking that he employed, and marrying Gardner’s past recordings to images shot in the present

Joe Gibbons
The Doppelganger Diaries
$10,000
An experimental documentary following an incorrigible but mild-mannered law-breaker as he reaches middle age and wonders if he will still be a criminal at 65

Sharon Lockhart
Lunchbreak
$15,000
A film that explores shifts in the world economy and the disappearing social space of the traditional American workers’ lunch break

Amy Lovera
Hand-made Awakenings and Urgent Poems
$10,000
A short animated translation of the real-life stories of everyday people

Anne Makepeace
As Nutyunean – We Still Live Here
$10,000
The story of Jessie Little-Doe, a Wampanoag mother and tribal secretary who has dreams of bringing the long-lost Wampanoag language back to life

Jenny Perlin
The Perlin Papers
$15,000
An eight-part feature length documentary that transforms specific documents from a Cold War archive, revealing stories of domestic espionage relevant today

Ry Russo-Young
You Won’t Miss Me
$10,000
A narrative following Shelly Brown, a twenty-three year old misfit recently released from a psychiatric hospital as she pursues romance and an acting career in New York City

Jeff Silva
For the Price of Freedom
$15,000
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

Norah Solorzano
Sidetrack
$10,000
A stop motion puppet animation that follows a bearded lady protagonist as she leaves the security of her carnival sideshow home, entering the normal world for the first time

Steve Subotnick
Lullaby
$20,000
A short animation based on a traditional cradle song from the island of Guernsey

Lucien Taylor
Sweetgrass
$20,000
A feature length film about the dying world of sheepherders in the American west

Frederick Wiseman
Boxing Gym
$15,000
A documentary film about a community boxing gym in Austin, Texas

Total Projects: 26
Total Awards: $280,000

• LEF Documentary Fellowships

This award is given in recognition of filmmakers for their consistent and continued production of high-quality films in the more traditional form of documentary, and for their significant contributions to the filmmaking community as a whole.

Henry Ferrini
$10,000

Joseph Tovares
$10,000