SFFILM, in partnership with the Westridge Foundation, announced today the five filmmaking teams receiving a total of $100,000 in screenwriting and development for their narrative features. One of the few grants open to early-stage narrative filmmakers, the SFFILM Westridge grants, awarded twice annually, “are designed for US-based filmmakers whose stories take place primarily in the United States and focus on the significant social issues and questions of our time.” In a statement, the jury said, “We are thrilled to be able to support these five filmmakers and their exceptional projects. Each has used their unique voice and experience to illuminate […]

Receiving its world premiere tomorrow in the Launch section of the 2019 SFFILM Festival, Tom Quinn’s sophomore feature Colewell stars Karen Allen, whose filmography runs from intimate dramas to some of contemporary cinema’s biggest blockbusters, as a clerk in a small town post office whose way of life — and, actually, her life itself — are imperiled when her branch is scheduled for closure. Inspired, as Quinn relates below, from learning of an instance in which a town was literally erased from a map, Colewell is a gentle, melancholic film, one inflected by bursts of real anger and sorrow, that […]

SFFILM, in partnership with the Kenneth Rainin Foundation, has announced the seven narrative feature projects that will receive a total of $240,000 in funding as part of the biannual Rainin Grants. The funds are awarded to teams whose films will have significant economic or professional impact on the Bay Area filmmaking community and/or pressing social issues. Previous recipients include Sorry to Bother You, Monsters and Men, Short Term 12, and Fruitvale Station. Applications are currently being accepted for the Spring 2019 round of SFFILM Rainin Grants; the deadline to apply is February 20. For further information visit sffilm.org/makers. FALL 2018 SFFILM RAININ GRANT […]

Earlier today, SFFilm announced the five recipients of their Westridge Grant, a biannual funding initiative that awards $100,000 to US-based filmmakers who are in the development stage of social justice related projects. This round’s panel of judges was comprised of Lauren Kushner, SFFILM Senior Manager of Artist Development; Alana Mayo, Head of Production at Outlier Society; Shelby Rachleff, Westridge Foundation Program Manager; Shira Rockowitz, Associate Director, Feature Film Program, Sundance; Jenny Slattery, SFFILM Associate Director of Artist Development and Foundations; and Caroline von Kühn, SFFILM Director of Artist Development. The next application cycle will open later this month. Read on to […]

Oakland’s Grand Lake Theatre is a 1926 Art Deco show palace that first hosted vaudeville shows and silent movie screenings accompanied by the bass-note oscillations of a Wurlitzer Hope Jones Unit-Orchestra Pipe Organ. The classic venue is symbolic of its city, which made it the ideal spot for the Bay Area premiere of a the debut feature by another Oakland icon: activist, musician and now writer-director Boots Riley, who came of age as a moviegoer at the venue. “I saw Star Wars here,” he told an audience that packed the house during the recent San Francisco International Film Festival, where the […]

SFFILM announced today the five titles that will comprise its 2018 Launch Program, an initiative intending to highlight for the industry a select group of world-premiering films drawn from different sections of the San Francisco International Film Festival. Films in last year’s Launch Program went on to be bought by distributors includingMagnolia Pictures and Sundance Selects, and SFFILM hopes to build on that momentum this second year. Interestingly, this year’s line-up consists entirely of docs as opposed to the 2017 edition, which featured two of five fiction titles. “We are delighted to shine the spotlight on our second year of […]

There’s long been an imbalance between grants available to fiction filmmakers as opposed to documentarians, and today SFFILM, the Bay Area-based nonprofit, has announced in partnership with the Westridge Foundation new biannual grants and other resources for narrative filmmakers based across the U.S. Four to five grants of $20,000 – $25,000 will be given each spring and fall, and applications are now open for the first cycle, which runs through February, 2018. From the press release: The SFFILM / Westridge program is designed specifically to support the screenwriting and development phases of narrative feature projects whose stories focus on the […]

SFFILM, the presenter of the San Francisco International Film Festival, has announced two new artist development programs as well other grants and partnerships. Supporting producers will be the New American Producer Fellowship, a program for a producer who has recently immigrated to the United States. Supported by the Flora Family Foundation and intended to “provide a stage for the perspectives of underrepresented filmmakers and to enrich the understanding, empathy, and curiosity of the general public,” the Fellowship will provide a $25,000 cash grant as well as an artist residency at SFFILM’s FilmHouse. The new Women, Peace and Security Fellowship, supported […]

A multi-layered biography of Alexander Graham Bell that explores not only the invention of the telephone but Bell’s work with eugenics and a thriller about industrial hacking are the two projects receiving Sloan Science in Cinema Fellowships from SFFFILM. SFFILM, the parent organization of the San Francisco International Film Festival, awards these grants — funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation — biannually and will provide each filmmaking team with script development support, a $35,000 cash grant and a two-month residency at FilmHouse, SFFILM’s suite of production offices for local and visiting independent filmmakers. Filmmakers will be connected with scientific […]