This annual film grant is intended to honor the spirit and legacy of Sarah Jacobson. Sarah, whose feature film Mary Jane’s Not A Virgin Anymore screened at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival, died in 2004 after a battle with cancer. Sarah led a DIY (“Do It Yourself”) movement in the 1990s, promoting and distributing her own work with her producer-mom, Ruth Ellen Jacobson, speaking at festivals and events everywhere, and writing about film for a number of publications. A tireless, at times even shameless, promoter of her own work, Sarah was also a passionate advocate for the films of fellow filmmakers.
The Free History Project, Ruth and Lee Jacobson, and a number of Sarah’s friends and supporters contribute funds in order to give out a small annual grant to one or more self-identifying women and gender nonconforming individuals whose work embodies some of the things that Sarah stood for: a fierce DIY approach to filmmaking, a radical social critique, and a thoroughly underground sensibility. Check out below our past grantees, who were chosen by a rotating panel of judges.
Mitch McCabe: Civil War Surveillance Poems
Madsen Minax: North By Current
Alyx Arumpac: Aswang
Ja’Tovia Gary: The Evidence of Things Not Seen
Natasha Mendonca: Mulachiparambu // Land of the Breasted Woman
Maura Jasper: Middletown Revisited: On Being Studied
2015 Winners:
Mariah Garnett: Other and Father
Caroline Key: Khôra
2014 Winners:
Anahita Ghazvinizadeh: The Baron in the Trees
Jennifer Reeder: Blood Below The Skin
Gina Kelly: Super Natura
Talena Sanders: Liahona
Mary Guzmán: Replaceable
Heather Lenz: KUSAMA: Princess of Polka Dots
Kate Marks: Miracle Maker: A Tale for Lost Causes and Desperate Cases
Akosua Adoma Owusu: Kwaku Ananse
Abby Moser: Grrrl Love and Revolution: Riot Grrrl NYC
Susan Mogul: Mom’s Move
Lana Wilson: Trust Girls
Natasha Mendonca: Jan Villa
Ellen Lake: Call and Response
Jo Dery: Peeks
Marie Losier: The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye
Kara Herold: Bachelorette, 34
Vanessa Renwick: Portrait #2: Trojan
Gretchen Hogue: See Photo
Veronica Majano: Remember Los Siete