Rooftop Films 2009 Filmmakers' Fund — in partnership with Chicken & Egg Fund and Cinereach — has provided grants for the completion of four short film projects.
They are: Sara Zia Ebrahimi's "Norman Schwarzkopf Made Me Gay," Moon Molson's "Crazy Beats Strong Every Time," James M. Johnston's "Knife," and Dustin Guy Defa's "We Have No Home."
According to the Rooftop Films' press release, "every year, Rooftop Films takes $1 from every film submission fee and every ticket sold, and sets that money aside to give grants to filmmakers whose work we have screened. … The goal of the fund is to help a diverse range of filmmakers create meaningful, personal, unique films. With funding coming from the community, often Rooftop Films grants spur the filmmakers to forge ahead with projects that wouldn't otherwise get made."
The information below is from Rooftop's press release:
ROOFTOP FILMS AND THE CHICKEN & EGG FUND SHORT FILM GRANT
Sara Zia Ebrahimi: Norman Schwarzkopf Made Me Gay
A personal film that recounts how "Stormin'" Norman Schwartzkopf’s life has influenced Ebrahimi’s. Norman Schwartzkopf Made Me Gay humorously weaves together personal history with world events in an effort to increase the audience’s knowledge about US foreign policy relations with Iran over the past century. The film draws on a variety of events in Ebrahimi's life that parallel or directly intersect with Schwartzkopf's–everything from his childhood memories of Iran where his father was stationed to being arrested by secret service agents for asking him a question. The film will utilize experimental film techniques to add a visually engaging approach to this historical recounting to accompany the unique storyline.
ROOFTOP FILMMAKERS’ FUND SHORT FILM GRANTS
Underwritten by Cinereach
+ Moon Molson: Crazy Beats Strong Every Time
The story is about an African-American twenty-something, Markees, who finds his Nigerian-immigrant stepfather passed out drunk in his building hallway one night. Motivated by shame and the restraining order his mother has placed on his stepfather, Markees and his friends drag the unconscious man into his car in order to find him a more suitable place to sleep. But as the night dwindles on, the young men become increasingly aware of the futility of unloading the stepfather. Tensions build and frustrations mount, forcing the situation toward a violent end. Crazy Beats Strong Every Time will show how in a world where being “hard” is the ultimate masculine value, a basically decent young man—if humiliated, taunted and pushed far enough—can do the unimaginable in the name of “saving face.”
+ James M. Johnston: Knife
Knife is a searing portrait of vengeance. Set in rural Texas, the story chronicles an unnamed man with a broken spirit. He returns to his family from an unknown place—maybe prison, maybe war. In spite of his family's warm welcome, the man can't shake an anger that builds in him, returning to the land that was once theirs, a land that had been in the family for generations, a land that has been stolen, plundered, and sewn with seeds of greed. There's a force at work, a corruption that destroys homes, nature, families, memories. Told entirely in silence, Knife explores the details, textures, physical actions of his ruinous mission to sate the hatred in his heart with the knife he carries in his hand.
+ Dustin Guy Defa: We Have No Home
A personal documentary in which Defa will return to his hometown to explore his family’s long history of violence, substance abuse, and heartache, including two cases of manslaughter, an attempted suicide, a shooting, a fatal overdose, and a death from alcohol poisoning. Defa says he feels detached from his family, yet concerned with their endless suffering. The recent arrest and conviction of the family?s “baby,” Defa’s uncle Billy, has caused him to take action. The film will approach the interviews and new footage in a vérité style, interspersed with old home movies and the filmmaker’s voice-over to guide the audience through the past and present. Defa says, “By asking tough questions to family members, discovering things I don’t know about them and about Billy, and illuminating some of the reasons we are the way we are, my objective is to lighten the tragic element of our lives, to observe it as a storyline that is still alive and changing.”
For more information visit: www.rooftopfilms.com/produce.html