The Santa Fe Film Institute continues bolstering film initiatives in New Mexico and has awarded $12,000 in grants and scholarships this year.

In 2023, SFFI’s Regional Filmmaker Grants supported five New Mexican filmmakers with a total of $7,000 in funding. The top Regional Filmmaker Grant was awarded to Charine Gonzales, a $4,500 grant for the project “How To Say ‘I Love You’ in Tewa.”

Other funded projects include a documentary from Taos filmmaker Hillary Bachelder about the Hermits Peak and Calf Canyon Fires and the New Mexican communities these fires displaced, “Phantom Roots” directed by Erica Nguyen, “We've Been Trying to Reach You” directed by Katharine Broyles, and “Underwatered” directed by Adrian Pijoan. In the last three years that the Regional Grant has been awarded, 2023 is the first year that all grantees were New Mexican filmmakers.

Santa Fe Film Institute’s Regional Grant program will open again in 2024. New Mexico filmmakers will be able to apply for up to $5,000 in funding through this program, and applicants in the surrounding states—Arizona, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Texas—may apply for up to $2,000. Potential applicants can subscribe to the Santa Fe International Film Festival’s email updates at santafe.film in order to receive the announcement when this program opens in 2024.

Dead Calm directed by Scott Hussion

Two Albuquerque legends, Ben Abruzzo and Maxie Anderson, dared to be the first to ever cross the Atlantic Ocean in a balloon. Thirteen had tried. 7 had died. After a near fatal attempt in 1977, Ben and Maxie were more determined than ever. In August, 1978 the two men, joined by Larry Newman, successfully made the first Trans-Atlantic crossing in a balloon.

This documentary captures the failures, heart-ache, and commitment it took to achieve such a quest. With Interviews from sons Benny and Louis Abruzzo, we will hear first account of what their father endured and sacrificed to become the man we remember today.

Drowned Land directed by Colleen Thurston

Drowned Land is a feature documentary that shares the stories of a group of water protectors determined to preserve the lifeline of their community and end a cycle of environmental exploitation on the Kiamichi River. Recently, the state of Oklahoma signed an agreement to divert up to 85% of the water from the most ecologically diverse river in Oklahoma—the Kiamichi, located deep in the Choctaw Nation.

Colleen Thurston, the director of Drowned Land and a Choctaw Nation citizen, has a personal tie to this story. A century after the federal government forcibly removed the Choctaw Nation from their homelands in the southeastern United States and sent them on the harrowing Trail of Tears to Oklahoma, Colleen’s Choctaw grandfather was an engineer with the Corps of Engineers, who helped to design and build the dams which displaced the very people who, like himself, came from a history of displacement.

The Kiamichi river is home to three endangered species of mussels, which keep the water clean, and which only exist in the Kiamichi watershed. Already threatened by climate change and the construction of Sardis Dam, this tiny mollusk is at risk due to the proposed water diversion. As the community fights to save their water, invoking the Endangered Species Act to protect the river's mussels may be the last hope to conserve the ecosystem.

Commerce City directed by Rául O. Paz Pastrana and Alan Domínguez

Commerce City is a visually striking portrait of the daily life and resilience of the Latinx residents of Commerce City, Colorado—deemed one of the most polluted zip codes in the United States. The film follows the Latinx residents of Commerce City through the seasons, as they navigate their daily lives within the dystopian backdrop of their streets where kids play, food carts sell, and its hard-working residents try to stay healthy in spite of the life threatening pollution that surrounds them.

At its center, Commerce City is home to an oil and gas refinery owned by Suncor, a multi-billion dollar Canadian company. The refinery has been cited numerous times by The Colorado Department of Health and Environment, and has permits that expired 10 years ago. For decades, residents of the area have been dealing with respiratory problems, nosebleeds, and multiple types of cancers, and there are times when local schools have needed to shelter-in-place in response to yellow dust coming from the refinery. Suncor deflects responsibility, dodges residents' questions about the harm of this output, and insultingly offers nearby residents car washes.

In 2021, local residents won a major victory, with Suncor's and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment's agreement to have an independent air monitor system throughout the city. While independent scientists monitor the air for one year, Commerce City explores the lives of the city's residents and their unique bilingual/bicultural traditions, patiently revealing the daily realities that many BIPOC communities face throughout the United States.

Bone Guitar directed by Nicole Elmer

There are few things teenage Owl loves more than watching his big brother Martin play in his leather-clad heavy metal band. But one night, Martin messes up his guitar solo, and the audience boos.

After the show, Gamma, the vocalist, beats up Martin for threatening their reputation as the best Navajo thrash metal band. Martin attempts a punch but hurts his hand. That night, Martin ruminates on how he’d be a better musician if he had a good guitar. As Owl finishes his biology homework, Martin spots anatomy diagrams in a textbook and gets an idea. If only he could get a guitar of bones, he’d be such a badass on stage.

Owl makes a sketch of a bone guitar and gets an idea. Meanwhile, Gamma throws Martin out of the band because his hand is fractured, and Martin tailspins into depression. Desperate, Owl must find a way to make Martin’s wish come true.

SANTA FE, NM (November 23, 2021)—Five filmmakers will be awarded for Santa Fe Film Institute’s (SFFI) first Regional Grant cycle. Grant recipients include Deja Bernhardt, Sharon Arteaga, Siena Sofia Bergt, Petyr Xyst, and Lois Lipman.

The SFFI team created this grant in 2021 as a professional opportunity to encourage and support filmmakers in New Mexico and the surrounding region. SFFI received applications from filmmakers throughout New Mexico, as well as the surrounding states of Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Texas during its first cycle.

“It’s really wonderful to award such an exciting group of projects,” said Santa Fe Film Institute President Jacques Paisner. SFFI will provide a total of $5,000 in funding distributed among the 2021 awarded film projects.

SFFI’s Regional Grant will continue to directly benefit filmmakers—as well as cast and crew, and other industry members—to help ensure the creation, completion, and success of features and short film projects. The Grand Prize Winner of Santa Fe Film Institute's Regional Grant will also receive a free certificate to use Final Draft's screenwriting application for a full year. Santa Fe Film Institute’s main project, the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival, will present its 14th edition October 19th–23rd, 2022.

For more information on Santa Fe Film Institute's 2022 Regional Grant cycle, please visit santafefilminstitute.org in early 2022.

ABOUT THE AWARDED PROJECTS

Deja Bernhardt: The Last Hawaiian Sugar

THE LAST HAWAIIAN SUGAR is a short drama set on the only remaining sugar cane plantation on Maui. NUA, a Samoan(12), lives here with her mother. A product of this migrant farm that brought ethnicities from around the world, she has an intensely spiritual connection to the land she exists on, this is how she identifies in the world. Her story is, in essence, a metaphor for the effects Big Sugar, and industrialized farming in whole, has had on the Hawaiian Islands. When Nua learns the mill is closing and they’ll be forced to leave, she attempts to tell her mother about the abuse her step-father inflicts upon her, hoping that they won’t have move with him. When her mother fails to hear her cries for help Nua resolves to sabotage the final sugarcane burn as she prepares to say goodbye to the only home she’s ever known.

Sharon Arteaga: In Tow

On the morning of her senior homecoming game, a self-involved high school cheerleader (Sheila) and her overworked single mom (Bonnie) wake up to find that their mobile home is being repossessed... with them inside of it! The estranged women are towed through country roads, arguing to get what each wants, inside their shaking, single-wide trailer. Bonnie tries to save the home she’s worked hard for, while Sheila desperately attempts to escape the moving home in order to make it in time to cheer at her last homecoming game.

The mobile home is on its way to the repossession lot by an oblivious truck driver who is immersed in a how-to podcast about acquiring wealth. After a climactic confrontation, the women rekindle their once intimate bond. In a last desperate attempt to save their home, the women find themselves in a stunt worthy of Dwayne "the Rock” Johnson. Not quick enough, the truck driver pulls up to the mobile home repossession lot. The women may have lost their physical home, but they found a deeper connection that will make them stronger than ever.

IN TOW is an 18-minute mother-daughter adventure film that looks at failure, forgiveness, and poverty, through drama, humor, and action. It’s about fluctuating dynamics of mother-daughter relationships and opposite effects that poverty can have on a household: with exhaustion on one end and an obsession to live beyond one's means on the other. Ultimately, IN TOW is about losing home and finding it through situations you least expect.

Siena Sofia Bergt: Radon’s Daughters

It’s getting harder for Nita Iglesias to balance mourning the loss of her sister, recovering items left in the Northern New Mexico desert by other vanished local women, and fighting to prevent her grandmother’s drug abuse. Her former childhood friend Isidro isn’t helping, either: the ragers he throws in their village church only seem to cause more disappearances, and it always falls to her to clean up toxic party remnants the next morning. But for Isidro, these gatherings offer a distraction from the realities of life in the village--and an opportunity to get even with rich kids from the government lab uphill. Those boys may have all the resources his own mining family could never access; but the radioactive inhalants he cooks up for his guests reassure him that they’ll all be better united in their deaths.

One of those lab kids, Julius Weiss, has just returned from med school after the AIDS-related death of his boyfriend, Ryosuke. Because Ryo’s dad was interned during WWII not far from Julius’ hometown, he plans to scatter his boyfriend’s remaining belongings at the former camp’s site. But he takes a wrong turn along the way, ending up at the village instead--where he discovers his younger sister Karin has been sneaking out to party with Isidro. Karin might only be seeing Isidro (and a few other boys along the way) to gather fodder for the installation she’s making about the missing women; but when the four cross paths at a party near the mines, the consequences of the meeting will change each of their lives forever.

Petyr Xyst: The Original Shareholder Experience

Rebecca, a darling of her employer The Freedom Company, is asked to meet with her superiors in order to sell a “controversial” product, being held in confidence due to an insurgent anti-colonial movement led by her estranged brother, that threatens to disturb the peace of the Company, which is growing into a quasi-governmental state.

They tell her that they want her to introduce the world to the Company’s Indigevillas—a getaway resort that’s a cross between an AirBnb, a New Age Enlightenment compound, and an Indian burial ground. It doesn’t go over as well as they had hoped.

Rebecca blows up at them for the first time in her 5 year long career, as they show her their ultra-Millennial launch promo, which depicts a white businessman finding enlightenment on her ancestral territory. Her anger is seemingly kept at bay when she’s offered a generous raise and a donation to her foundation.

In her deliberation, she finds herself looking at the protest movement outside, her looming above them on the lush sixtieth floor. Once she sees the Company’s security force slaughter them—including her brother—her mind is made. She arrives on set and burns it all down, sparking the fire of a revolution that will change the world.

Lois Lipman: Downwinders

DOWNWINDERS is a story of government betrayal with tragic consequences, and of the rise of a grassroots movement for justice. Galvanized by a charismatic Hispanx female entrepreneur, Tina Cordova, those affected have come together to lobby Congress and speak out. While the federal government tracked damage to the remote Nevada communities affected by later test blasts, and eventually made amends through the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA 1990), the New Mexican Downwinders have been ignored.