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Fully Funded Projects

Title: Big Tea Party--Philly Side, FDR Skate Park

Producers:Big Tea Party

Length: Two six-minute short video documentaries

Description: Skateboarders and Philadelphia's city government collaborate to create the world famous skate park, Philly Side, located in a corner of FDR Park in South Philadelphia.

Producers Profile: Since 1998, these Philadelphia-based producers have completed over 20 episodes of Big Tea Party shorts. The programs have aired on public television and at festivals internationally. The team includes Elizabeth Fiend, the series' host, Gretjen Clausing, who produces and directs, and Valerie Keller, an editor for various PBS programs (Dinosaurs!, Fever).

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Title: Loqueesha Franklin Jose Brown

Producer: Nadine Patterson

Length: 20 minutes, experimental video

Description: The collaboration among Philadelphia's finest artists: poet Ursula Rucker, filmmaker Nadine Patterson and music composer/producer Rob Yancey results in the creation of a soundscape of poetic imagery set to Ursula Rucker's provocative meditation on a child growing up in Philadelphia.

Producer Profile: Nadine Patterson, a Philadelphia-based independent producer and recipient of a Media Arts Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, has had her award-winning work shown on public television. Her production credits include, Anna Russell Jones: Praissong for a Pioneering Spirit and Moving with the Dreaming.

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Title: Life Stories From Philadelphia

Producers: Termite TV Collective

Length: 28:30 minutes, video documentary

Description: An unusual portrayal of the city seen through the eyes of its residents. Using Philadelphia's landscape as a backdrop, people of all ages, social background and culture share stories of their lives.

Producer Profile: Philadelphia-based Termite TV (Anula Shetty, Carl Lee, Mike Kuetermeyer and Dorothea Braemer) has been turning out half-hour shows over the past 10 years. Their work has screened around the country at festivals and on television. Last fall, the Museum of Television & Radio featured their groundbreaking Living Documentary..

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Title: Family Values

Producer: Eva Saks

Length: 25 minutes, video documentary

Description: Family Values is about a normal American family: a nice couple in suburban Philadelphia who run a family business. On another level they are not typical at all: the two parents are both women and the family business is cleaning up murder sites-which takes them all over the city, into every community and culture.

Producer Profile: Eva Saks, a New York-based independent filmmaker, is a member of the Lincoln Center Director's Lab and winner of the 1999 Drama League's "New Directors, New Works" Fellowship. Her award-winning short comedy, Custody, has been screened in festivals from New York to Florida, and is licensed on the Internet to Centerseat.com, and IndieDVD for DVD release.

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Title: Rosewater

Producer: Kimi Takesue

Length: 15 minutes, Fictional Film

Description: A solitary man struggles to cultivate beauty in a surreal urban world. Lonely and dislocated, he drifts in and out of a dream state envisioning the promise of regeneration. Rosewater tells the story of hope sustained through obsession, ritual and ultimately, sensuality.

Producer Profile: Kimi Takesue is an award-winning Philadelphia-based filmmaker. Her recent short film Rosewater has received the Golden Reel Award at the 1999 Los Angeles Asian Pacific International Film Festival, an Honorable Mention at the New England Film Festival and has screened at the Slamdance and the British Short Film Festival in London.

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Title: Welcome to CB Land

Producer: Cheryl Hess

Air Date: 4/3/01

Length: 18 minutes, video documentary

Description: Part documentary and part film noir, Welcome to CB Land tells the story of a frustrated filmmaker's obsession with her South Philly neighbor and his CB radio.

Producer Profile: Cheryl Hess is a Philadelphia-based, filmmaker whose short film, Deck has received the Jury Award from the Slice of Life Documentary Festival and won the Independent Film Channel's Showcase in 1996. She was awarded a Silver Apple from the National Educational Media Network for her video documentary In the Weeds.

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Partially Funded Projects

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Title: Severed Soul

Producer: Tina Morton

Length: 30 minutes, video documentary (new work!)

Description: Severed Soul is about Corinne Sykes, the first African-American woman executed in Pennsylvania. Sykes, a Philadelphia maid, was accused of killing her employer, Freda Wodlinger. The documentary chronicles both the Black Community's recollection of the execution and the filmmakers' haunted connection to it.

Producer Profile: Tina Morton is a Philadelphia-based independent videomaker. Her other works include the award-winning, The Dance in Aunt Ida Lee and A Promise Fulfilled, which documents a Vietnam veteran who made a promise to his fallen comrade to journey across country in a horse-drawn covered wagon in the tradition of the Buffalo Soldiers.

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Title: Crosstown

Producer: Miriam Camitta

Length: 30 minutes, video documentary (new work!)

Description: The story of urban renewal set in South Philadelphia during the 1950s and 1960s, focusing on the reaction of a diverse group of people to a proposal to build an expressway through South Street, the beloved main street of their neighborhood. It is a Philadelphia story that cuts across time, gender, race and economics.

Producer Profile: Miriam Camitta is a folklorist and educator specializing in literacy, community affairs, and environmental justice. Crosstown, her first project as an independent filmmaker, is a tribute to the many Philadelphians she has worked with who have dedicated their lives to protecting and fostering the quality of life in their neighborhoods, and to those in the public and private sector who have helped them.

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Title: She Be Dancin' - The Philadanco Experience (formerly titled "The Heart of Ms. Brown")

Producer: Carmella Vassor

Length: 40 minutes, video documentary (new work)

Description: She Be Dancin' - The Philadanco Experience, explores the process of Philadelphia dance company and founder Joan Myers Brown as they build towards their 30th Anniversary Season. We share the dancers' joy, pain, struggles and accomplishments alongside Ms. Brown's contemplation of the company's future.

Producer Profile: A native Philadelphian and former member of the Philadelphia Dance Company (Philadanco), Carmella Vassor has taken her love of dance and her skills as a media artist to explore the intersection of these two art forms through documentaries, video installations and collaborations with dance artists. Her documentary works include, Creating Across Cultures and Eko & Sen Hea - A Journey Beyond. Carmella Vassor is the recipient of a 1999 Pew Charitable Trust Fellowship in Dance/Media.

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Title: In the Shadow of the Shortest Saint

Producer: Michael O'Reilly

Length: 20 minutes, experimental documentary (new work!)

Description: In the Shadow of the Shortest Saint weaves commentary, music and imaging techniques about the life of the first American saint and the Philadelphia neighborhood in which he lived. O'Reilly's narrative touches on his own personal relation to prayer as well as that of his aunt, a nun.

Producer Profile: Michael O'Reilly is an accomplished award winning filmmaker, composer and writer. His films have been shown in the London ICA, The New York Film Festival, and at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. He was awarded a Pew Fellowship in the Arts and NEA Visual Artists Fellowship. He lives and works in Philadelphia.

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Acquired Works Descriptions

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Title: 94 Years and 1 Nursing Home Later

Producer: Laurel Greenberg

Length: 46 minutes, documentary - color, video & 16mm film 1999 (first television broadcast!)

Description: After watching home videos shot by her father of his mother in a Philadelphia nursing home, Laurel Greenberg sets out with her own camera to discover how her beloved Meemom, an immigrant from Russia and a caretaker of others, ended up alone at the end of her life.

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Title: Moonsheep

Producer: Dorothea Braemer

Length: 29:30 minutes, fiction black & white, 16mm film, 1998 (first television broadcast! )

Description: Moonsheep tells the story of Loretta, a German immigrant who lives in Philadelphia and whose goal it is to win the lottery and become a famous novelist. One day two loud and nosy visitors knock on the door and won't leave. Unable to kick them out, Loretta flees into the bar, where she meets Romana, the Hungarian bartender. Romana recites a poem about Moonsheep, and Loretta's life changes in unexpected ways.

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Producer: Ron Kanter

Title: Acting Out

Length: 55:30 minutes, documentary - color, video, 2000 (first television broadcast!)

Description: Acting Out gives kids serving in the Juvenile Justice System a chance to speak for themselves. Through improv theater and audio montage, they offer a window into their personal experiences at home, on the corner and in court. Shot at St Gabriel's Hall in suburban Philadelphia, Acting Out skips the usual statistics and narration to paint a vivid portrait of eight surprising young men.

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Title: Moon Juice

Producer: Margie Strosser

Length: 30 minutes, fiction--black & white, 16mm film, 1998 (first television broadcast!)

Description: It's the summer of 1966. The Vietnam war is escalating, flower children preach free love from the cover of Time magazine, and abortion is illegal. In the sleepy little industrial town just outside Philadelphia, 17-year-old Mary is afraid she is pregnant and her boyfriend will be drafted. Realizing that she lives in a man's world and is unwilling to accept the limited future looming before her, she sets out to take control of her life.

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Title: Amateur Night At City Hall: The Story of Frank L. Rizzo

Producer: Robert Mugge

Length: 75 minutes, documentary--color, 16mm film, 1978 (first time broadcast in its entirety on television in North America!)

Description: Amateur Night At City Hall, an award winning and critically acclaimed documentary film, carefully chronicles the meteoric rise of Frank L. Rizzo from cop on the beat, to law-and-order Police Commissioner, to Mayor of America's fourth largest city. A historical gem, the film illustrates key events in Rizzo's colorful and controversial career while capturing the essence of Philadelphia's reputation as a city of neighborhoods.

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Title: A Tourist

Producer: Keiichi Kondoh

Length: 16 minutes, experimental narrative - color, 16mm, 2000 --first American television broadcast!

Description: A young Japanese man comes to a new country, a new city--Philadelphia--looking for the answer to a question from a voice in the past. Although he is lost in time and space, mysterious messengers deliver pieces of the puzzle.

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Title: The Seekers

Producers: The Big Picture Alliance

Length: 40 minutes, Sci-Fi - color, digital video, 2000, first television broadcast!

Description: Produced in collaboration with students from North Philadelphia's Village Prep School, this sci-fi thriller is set in the year 2075-70 years after a great world war devastated both civilization and history. The Seekers are bands of young people chosen by the remaining human survivors to recover the knowledge of the vanished civilization. To reach their goal they must undertake a perilous journey find the WISEONE.

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Title: Dear Sir... Letters from a Union Soldier

Producers: Michael Mullan & Jessica Lakis

Length: 20 minutes, Experimental Documentary - Color, 16mm 2000, first television broadcast!!

Description: This film is based on Michael Mullan's discovery of the grave of Lieut. Michael Mullin of the 69th Pennsylvania regiment at Gettysburg, a weaver born in Derry, Ireland who lived a short and difficult life.

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Title: Krewstown - your past is never history

Producer: Ira Rosensweig

Length: 21 minutes, Fiction - Color, 16mm Film, 1999, first television broadcast!

Description: Leonard Whitmore is coming home. After years in prison, he hopes to leave behind his past and start anew. His neighbors have other ideas.

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Title: Roots--A Film En Music

Producer: Vincent C. Ellis

Length: 14 minutes, Fiction - Color, 16mm Film, 1999, first television broadcast!

Description: A personal statement about perception, prejudice and the justice System, Roots uses film and music as global languages, telling the story about a man sent to prison for a crime he did not commit. Shot beautifully on location (Eastern State Penitentiary and Holmesburg Prison), this award-winning film features music by Dub Research, a Philadelphia-based Reggae group.

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Title: Iggy & Antjuan - a work in progress

Producers: Andres Nicolini and Karen Smith

Length: 32 minutes, Verité Documentary - Color, Video, 2000, new work!

Description: Follow Iggy & Antjuan, two young adults with developmental disabilities as they create a family for themselves. From wedding day to activities of daily living, the filmmakers provide an intimate forum for Iggy and Antjuan to tell their story ... a love story.

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Title: Invisible Cities

Producer: Eugene Martin

Length: 56 minutes, experimental film--color, 16mm, 1990, festival favorite!

Description: Invisible Cities is about the end of centuries and the beginning of new ones. A young cameraman travels through Berlin, Philadelphia, Torino and Las Vegas, reflecting upon the life of Eugene Atget, whose photographs vividly captured Paris at the turn of the 20th century, and composing his own photographic journal of the 21st century as it arrives

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Title: Love Knots

Producer: Allison Humenuk

Length: 30 minutes, documentary film - color, 16mm, 1992, first television broadcast!

Description: Love Knots, a short non-fiction film, weaves together the lives of three American couples. Over several years, the filmmaker follows her college roommate through the early stages of marriage, her own parents as they struggle with their marriage of 28 years, and a recently married couple in their 90's. Although the couples are not related, the film is cut with a lyrical eye so their experiences are connected to form a composite life.

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Title: Brincando El Charco: Portrait of a Puerto Rican

Producer: Frances Negrón-Muntaner

Length: 55 minutes, Documentary Film - Color, 16mm, 1992, festival favorite!

Description: Brincando El Charco explores the notion of identity through the experiences of a Puerto Rican woman living in the US. In a wonderful mix of fiction, archival footage, processed interviews and soap opera drama, Brincando El Charco tells the story of Claudia Marin, a middle-class, light- skinned Puerto Rican photographer/videographer attempting to construct a sense of community in the US. Confronting the simultaneity of both her privilege and her oppression.

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Title: Ape Labors

Producer: Jason Warnesky

Length: 3:30 minutes, Film - Color, 1997, first television broadcast!

Description: Short, but powerful, Ape Labors depicts a tragedy that occurred at the Philadelphia Zoo on Christmas Eve of 1995, when a fire broke out and 23 primates died.

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Title: The Eye of God

Producer: Hernan Reyes

Length: 5:30 minutes, Narrative Film - Black & White, 16mm, 1992, first television broadcast!

Description: A woman draws parallels between her relationship with an abusive father and God.