30 new and veteran filmmakers receive Sundance Institute docu grants

Its good to know that no matter how many years you've been making doc films that the money (that of the support kind) is one grant away. Whether your name is Wiseman/Maysles or if you are new and haven't made your name yet,  the Sundance Institute Documentary Fund has announced the  projects that will receive grants. Here is a complete list below – keep an eye out for them in the future

PROJECTS IN DEVELOPMENT

Anne Makepeace

AS NATAYUNEAN-WE STILL LIVE HERE (US)

Jessie Little Doe, of the Wampanoag nation, revives a silenced indigenous language that was out of  use for more than 150 years.

Marc Francis and Nick Francis

Chinese Safari (UK)

Lusaka, Zambia is home to one of Africa's largest Chinatowns and is at the crossroads of China's strategic expansion into Africa.

Pamela Yates

GRANITO (US)

Nobel Peace Laureate Rigoberta Menchu accuses Guatemala's ex-dictator, General Rios Montt, of genocide and uses the 1982 classic documentary film, When the Mountains Tremble, as forensic evidence to bring a case against him.

Albert Maysles

HANDHELD AND FROM THE HEART (US)

Albert Maysles returns to his Boston roots and reconnects with old friends, resulting in an autobiographical film reflecting on a 50-year love affair with documentary.

Thierry Michel

KATANGA, MINING BUSINESS (Belgium)

Key players in a new, industrial revolution in Katanga (Democratic Republic of the Congo) struggle against a war being waged by ruthless multinational corporations.

Julianna Brannum

LADONNA HARRIS: INDIAN 101 (US)

Comanche activist LaDonna Harris conveys a unique vision of leadership to a new generation of indigenous professionals.

Özgür Dogan and Orhan Eskiköy

ON THE WAY TO SCHOOL (Turkey)

A year in the life of a Turkish  school teacher in a remote town in Turkey. With a Kurdish class that can't speak Turkish, and the teacher who can't speak Kurdish, both are alien in the same land.

Rachel Libert

SEMPER FI:  ALWAYS FAITHFUL (US)

Two retired Marines lead the fight for justice for U.S. soldiers exposed to dangerous toxic chemicals while stationed at Camp Lejeune Marine Corps Base in North Carolina.

Andrew Okpeaha MacLean

SWALLOWED BY THE  SEA (US)
In a small Inuit village on the remote barrier island of Shishmaref, Alaska, residents struggle with the devastating effects of erosion due to global climate change.

Carvin Eison  and Christine Christopher

UMBRA: EMERGING FROM THE SHADOWS (US)

In Jena, Louisiana, nooses swing from the schoolyard oak tree and six black high school students are persecuted in ways that eerily evoke the past. The story illuminates the entrenched culture of racially motivated violence in America.

Will Sankhla

WE HAVE NO ORDERS TO SAVE YOU (US/India)

The youngest survivors of the 2002 Gujarati riots in India move into adulthood, facing choices that will affect their future and the future of pluralism in India.

Rachael Turner and Alison Quirk

WHERE WOMEN RULE  (UK)

In the first women-only village in Kenya, women learn to thrive after entrenched violence and male domination.

PROJECTS IN PRODUCTION/POST-PRODUCTION

Tin Dirdamal

AGUA (Mexico)

In Cochabamba, Bolivia, four people connected to the first “water war” of the 21st century shed light on – and perhaps foreshadow – wars to come.

Fredrik Gertten

BANANAS (Sweden)

Nicaraguan banana farmers take multi-national banana industrialists to court over the use of banned pesticides in an historic case.

Miao Wang

BEIJING TAXI (China/US)

Three Beijing taxi drivers connect a morphing cityscape with citizen tales in the midst of dizzying change accelerated by the 2008 Olympic Games.

Frederick Wiseman

BOXING GYM (US)

In a community boxing gym in Austin, TX, the controlled use of violence is taught to men, women, and children of all social classes, races, ages, and ethnicities. 

Marion Lipschutz and Rose Rosenblatt

BRANDON AND THE CLIFFORD TWINS (US)

Three young Lakotas on the Pine Ridge reservation are swept into a high-stakes tribal election that hangs on sovereignty, representation, and abortion politics.

Terry Jones, Laure Sullivan and Paul Wilson

CASINO NATION (US)

After a long and bloody struggle, the Seneca Nation of Indians is now in the casino business, and the tribe is changing forever.  Casino Nation follows the conflicts the tribe faces as big money flows into this small sovereign nation.  

Isaac Julien

DEREK JARMAN (UK)

A creative portrait of influential English filmmaker and fine artist, Derek Jarman.

Andres Habegger

FINAL IMAGE (Argentina)

Leonardo Henrichsen, an Argentinean cameraman, films his own murder during an attempted military coup in Chile in June 1973. The history of a continent unfolds through the images made by one man.

NC Heikin

KIMJONGILIA (France/US)

Survivors of North Korean concentration camps share wrenching, first-hand testimonies.

Margarita Martinez Escallon and Miguel Salazar

PEACEFUL WARRIORS (Colombia)

Amidst long-standing guerilla warfare throughout southern Colombia, the indigenous Nasa community  strives to maintain their ideals of non-violent resistance.

Deann Borshay Liem

PRECIOUS OBJECTS OF DESIRE (US)

Swapped with another girl by her South Korean orphanage prior to adoption by an American couple, the filmmaker searches for her namesake and roots.

Annie Goldson

An Island Calling (New Zealand)

The double murder of a gay couple in Fiji in 2001 reveals the social and political fractures in the postcolonial landscape of the Pacific.

Meg McLagan and Daria Sommers

TEAM LIONESS (US)

A group of female soldiers who went to Iraq as mechanics, supply clerks, and engineers, return home a year later as part of America's first generation of female combat veterans.

Jerret Engle

THE KITCHEN WARRIORS (US/South Africa)

Students in a township-run South African cooking school struggle to reshape their lives and pursue culinary careers.