June 2024 Newsletter

Image Description: Filmmaker Riccardo Giacconi

We are delighted to join the Harvard Film Study Center in announcing that Riccardo Giacconi has been selected as the 2024-25 recipient of the Film Study Center-LEF Foundation Fellowship. Giacconi's film in progress, Affidavit, follows a 30-year-old radio producer as she records voices and sounds in a small rural village, summoning the distant memory of a violent act that the local community still grapples with.

Through her microphones, the radio producer facilitates a sort of séance, where the past is brought to the surface through conversations and by listening to soundscapes at various crime scenes as if searching for phantom radiation that still resonates in the air. The film aims to evoke the practice of radio-making in the form of a portrait within a portrait.

Riccardo Giacconi is an artist, filmmaker, and researcher. He studied fine arts at IUAV University in Venice and received a PhD from Leiden University. His work has been exhibited in various festivals and venues, including the New York Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Visions du Réel and FID Marseille, where he won the Grand Prix of the International Competition in 2015. His most recent film, Giganti Rosse, premiered at the Torino Film Festival, where it was awarded Best Italian Documentary in 2023. He co-founded the collective listening festival Helicotrema and the audio storytelling studio Botafuego. Giacconi is Professor of the Practice at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, Boston.

The FSC-LEF Fellowship is awarded annually to one Boston-area nonfiction filmmaker not currently affiliated with Harvard. The filmmaker receives a $10,000 grant (jointly funded by FSC and LEF Foundation), access to FSC production and post-production equipment, and the opportunity to participate in Harvard FSC work-in-progress screenings, workshops, and other activities.

Image descriptions: In this still image from Lisa Olivieri's film RECOVERY CITY, two women with light skin and light hair converse with a figure with long, curly dark hair and their back to the camera.

LEF-supported project RECOVERY CITY (dir. Lisa Olivieri; prods. Olivieri, Angelica Brisk) will have its world premiere at the Provincetown International Film Festival on June 13. The film is a raw exploration of addiction and recovery as seen through the eyes of four women in the working-class city of Worcester, MA. You can read more about this and other festival films in a recent piece in the Cape Cod Times. PIFF runs from June 12–16.

Also playing at PIFF is DESIRE LINES, a film by prior LEF grantee Jules Rosskam (PATERNAL RITES). Later in the month, the film will be at Frameline (San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Festival), which runs from June 19–29.

LEF-supported project ISRAELISM (dirs. Erin Axelman, Sam Eilertsen; prods. Axelman, Daniel J. Chalfen, and Nadia Saah) has been acquired by newly-launched distributor Watermelon Pictures, and is now available to stream through major VOD services like Apple TV, Amazon Prime, Google Play, and others. Screenings of the film, which is about changing Jewish attitudes toward Israel, can be booked anywhere in the world, with prices on a sliding scale and a portion of all proceeds going to Medical Aid in Gaza.

Image Descriptions: Headshots of 2024 LEF New England Flaherty Fellows Maxime Cavajani and Pauline Shongov

Since 2009, LEF New England has partnered with the Flaherty to support the participation of New England-based nonfiction filmmakers at the Flaherty Film Seminar.

The LEF New England Fellows at this year's Flaherty Seminar are:

• Maxime Cavajani is a multimedia artist working across experimental video, photography, drawing, sculpture, performance, and installation. Their practice investigates the space and time that is in between queer bodies, questioning the “seen” and the “legible”. Thinking through mnemonic functions, their work uses the slippages in between image and imaging, sculpture and forming, performance and gesture, sound, and noise to challenge modes of address. Rather than locating what is in motion, their work reverberates through bits, blurs, traces, and reflections. In doing so, the artist asks the public to question their own mnemonic system through themes of desire, violence, death, loss, and love.

• Pauline Shongov is a filmmaker whose work explores oral, historical, affective, and haptic senses of place as well as local and diasporic forms of community belonging, particularly in the Balkans. Her latest film Couple More Shovels for a Few More Levs (2023) premiered at the German International Ethnographic Film Festival and was selected for the Visions du Reel Film Market and Ji.hlava New Visions Market. Her practice-based work has been supported by the Harvard Film Study Center, Sensory Ethnography Lab, Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative, and the Cornell Council of the Arts. She is a PhD candidate in film and visual studies at Harvard University, where she is a Presidential Scholar. She is also the co-founder of the curatorial research initiative Off-site. Currently, she is co-directing/co-producing Borá: a film that follows foragers, treasure hunters, foresters, and clairvoyants on their journeys through a mountain that unearth a cryptic landscape ripe with fables, legends, and apparitions.

This year’s seminar, To Commune, will take place at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya, Thailand from June 27–July 7. See the full list of Flaherty fellows.



Image Description: A graphic for DocuMentality's The Price of Passion Report.

Last month, DocuMentality, working toward its goal of creating dialogue and collaborative change around mental well-being in the documentary field, published a report, The Price of Passion: How Our Love of Documentary Filmmaking Impacts Our Mental Health. The report draws from twenty-one focus groups of filmmakers across Canada, the US, and the UK, and the published findings are described with long quotes directly from these (anonymous) participants, who were asked to discuss how the broad term of "mental health" is connected to their work. The report also includes a summary of a focus group of industry representatives hosted at CPH:DOX in 2023.

"The current climate sees mental health as a personal responsibility," concludes the report, "and documentary filmmakers are carrying the mental and emotional weight of each production." Mental health concerns facing documentary filmmakers are reported to stem from issues such as funding scarcity, power imbalances, job insecurity, and pressures of success. With smaller budgets and increasing demands for "entertaining content", filmmakers are faced with decisions to "cut corners" when it comes to their own mental health, as well as that of the crew and those contributing to the film. Because the structure of the industry, either directly or indirectly, tends to reward extractive practices, filmmakers and funders who are interested in duties of care, compensation, and reasonable boundaries with those helping to create work find it difficult to center these practices in their filmmaking, causing strain on the mental well-being of films teams and participants.

The DocuMentality report also highlights what focus group participants shared about their desires for creating an equitable and supportive culture: addressing racial inequality, broadening accessibility, increasing financial security, and prioritizing transparency, accountability, and solidarity. A lot of the identified paths forward relate to the strengthening of interpersonal relationships and the foundational trust that erodes power imbalances, as well as a general flexibility that extends to all parts of the filmmaking process. "[T]he dissonance between respect for the art form and the lived experience of documentary filmmakers is resounding," the report mentions, and the resolution it suggests is to remember that behind all filmmaking teams, on-screen characters, and documentary-loving audiences, are people with diverse and intersecting needs.

Image Description: Center for Independent Documentary Logo

Image Description: Collective Futures Fund Logo

Image Description: City of Boston Logo

Image Description: Headlands Center for the Arts Logo

Image Description: Vermont Studio Center Logo

Image Description: Collective Futures Fund Logo

Image Description: Film Independent Logo

Image Description: Sundance Institute Logo

Image Description: International Documentary Association Logo

Image Description: Latino Public Broadcasting Logo

Image Description: Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Logo

Image Description: Maine Arts Commission Logo

Image Description: Sundance Institute Logo

Image Description: AXS Film Fund Logo

Image Description: Yaddo Logo

Image Description: New Hampshire State Council on the Arts Logo

Image Description: Indigo Arts Allaince Logo

Thanks for reading,

The LEF New England team

Lyda, Gen, & Matthew

LEF Foundation

PO Box 382066

Cambridge, MA 02238

617.492.5333

lef-foundation.org

A private family foundation dedicated to the support of contemporary arts, LEF was established in 1985 with offices in Massachusetts and California. The Moving Image Fund was launched in 2001 through the LEF office in Cambridge, MA to support independent film and video artists. Since its inception, the Moving Image Fund has awarded over 450 grants to New England-based independent filmmakers with over $5 million in funding. The goal of LEF New England is to fund the work of independent documentary film and video artists in the region and to broaden recognition and support for their work locally and nationally. It also supports programs that highlight the rich history and ongoing legacy of innovation within New England's independent film community. The overarching goal of LEF New England's philanthropic investment is to help build a sustainable and strong community of support for artists and their work.