SSFILM WINNERS PHOTO COURTESY OF MEDIUM
Thesis student Sontenish Myers, and Grad Film alumni Shelly Grizim, Deniz Buga and Carol Liu received SSFILM grants for their respective projects.
Myers received a screenwriting grant for her film Stampede. Set on a southern plantation in the 1800s, Stampede follows a young slave girl named Lena who develops telekinetic powers she cannot yet control. Circumstances escalate when she is separated from her mother to be a house girl, in close quarters with the mercurial Master’s wife, Elizabeth.
One Hand Clapping - written/directed by Grizim, produced by Buga - also received a screenwriting grant. Their film features two women trapped in an obsessive relationship and only through acts of hopeless revenge is their great love revealed. In this temporal loop of conflicted hearts, an Israeli woman, a Palestinian woman, and a young child form an impossible family.
Carol Liu won a screenwriting grant for The Goddesses of Nanking, about two women who crusade to bring to light the Japanese wartime atrocities committed at the Rape of Nanking; their heroic efforts come at a great personal cost.
These films were three of only eight narrative-feature projects selected overall. Notable previous SFFILM grant winners have been Joe Talbot’s The Last Black Man in San Francisco and Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You.