2014 Latin America Media Arts Fund Grantees Announced
Today TFI unveiled the recipients of the 2014 TFI Latin America Media Arts Fund, which supports world-class storytelling from media artists living and working in the Caribbean, Mexico, Central and South America, and the Heineken VOCES Awards, which support Latino American filmmakers who live and work in the United States.
TFI Latin America Media Arts Fund will award four $10,000 grants to animation, documentary, and/or hybrid feature-length films in advanced development, production or post-production. Grantees also receive exclusive continued guidance from TFI to ensure that each film reaches completion and enters the U.S. marketplace from the best possible vantage point.
Past grantees include, Elena, a 2012 Latin America Media Arts Fund recipient, which premiered at SXSW 2013 and The Girl Behind the Camera, a 2013 Latin America Media Arts Fund recipient and winner of the ARTE Prize for the Pixel Pitch.
The following four films are winners of this year’s TFI Latin America Media Arts Fund grants:
El Charro de Toluquilla – Mexico: Directed and Produced by Jose Villalobos Romero; Produced by Sergio Morkin; Developed by Romero and Claudia Mendez. El Charro de Toluquilla tells the story of Jaime Garcia—a mariachi singer and braggart who lives his life like a chauvinistic vintage Mexican movie character, but with one difference: he is HIV-positive.
– Mexico: Directed by Andres E. Kaiser; Produced by Nicole Maynard Pinto, Juan Hernandez and Osvaldo Montano. A series of videotapes serve as the only witness to the tragic death of priest Juan Felipe, who had been trying to re-educate three wild children. The truth will be revealed through the reconstruction of different events.
– Colombia: Directed by Simon Hernandez; Produced by Christian Bitar Giraldo. This film follows the personal quest of María José Pizarro to reconstruct her life and the life and death of her guerilla leader father, in order to reconcile with him.
The Belly of the Whale – Cuba: Written and Directed by Horizoe Garcia; Produced by Ivonne Cotorruelo. Three Cuban families strive to rise above their socio-sconomic limitations and start a new chapter in their lives—hoping to break the inertia and apathy plaguing the country.
Four Bloomberg Fellows, one from each region, will be awarded a $12,000 grant and an invitation to participate in the workshop in their home country. They include:
Beaverland – Chile: Directed by Antonio Luco & Nicolas Molina; Produced by Francisco Herve. Derek and Giorgia, a young couple of biologists, enter the hostile land of Tierra del Fuego to investigate a devastating plague of beavers sweeping the area.
Jonas and the Circus Without a Tent – Brazil: Written and Directed by Paula Gomes; Co-Written by Haroldo Borges; Produced by Marcos Bautista and Ernesto Molinero. Jonas is 13 years old and his life´s dream is to maintain the circus he created in his backyard. While he faces this challenge, he will live the adventure of growing up.
Patient – Colombia: Written, Produced and Directed by Jorge Caballero. In Patient a young woman struggles to beat her recent cancer diagnosis, all while her mother persistently fights the bureaucratic health care system in Colombia.
The Mermaid and the Myth of the Eternal Return – Mexico: Directed by Luis Rincon; Produced by Cristina Velasco. In a Nicaraguan fishing community, divers are getting sick. They descend to the sea looking for lobster and return to the surface with their bodies paralyzed. With no other explanation, the old men in the village believe the divers have raised the anger of a mythical “Mermaid.”
The Heineken VOCES Award is part of the Latin America Media Arts Fund and is granted to one documentary and one narrative project annually. They include:
La Raya, 2014 Heineken VOCES Narrative grant: Written and Directed by Yolanda Cruz. The mysterious appearance of a refrigerator in the outskirts of La Raya, a remote village in the mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico, promises business, money and success for 11 year-old Papio, a precocious boy who dreams of his father’s return from the United States.
Sanson and Me, 2014 Heineken VOCES Documentary grant: Directed by Rodrigo Reyes; Produced by Inti Cordera & Su Kim. A coming-of-age of two Mexican immigrants with parallel lives: one is a country boy serving a life sentence for a murder conviction, and the other is the filmmaker himself—a middle-class intellectual from Mexico City. Sanson and Me is an essay film that reflects on how issues of class, poverty, immigration and gang violence intersect with the American Dream.
Jurors for this year’s Latin Fund, who included Paula Heredia, Matthias Ehrenberg and Julian Schnabel, selected the recipients from a group of finalists narrowed from 170 submissions.
[Photo: Jonas and the Circus Without a Tent]
