Emerson Faculty, Alum Receive Grants for New England Documentarians

The LEF Foundation awarded several faculty members and an alum grants to support their work on feature-length documentaries.

Seven grants for $5,000 were provided to projects at the pre-production stage, and seven grants of $2,500 went to projects at the early development stage. 

Three films with an Emerson connection received a $2,500 grant:

• The Midway in Sunlight and Shadow: A 21st Century Guidebook to the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, directed and produced by Visual & Media Arts Professor Marc Fields, and Visual & Media Arts Chair and produced by VMA Chair Shaun Clarke.
• Overdue: Boston Chinatown’s Struggle to Reclaim and Restore its Branch Library is co-directed by Visual & Media Arts Associate Professor Jesse Epstein and Melissa Taing.
• Silver & Earth is directed by Visual & Media Arts Professor and Associate Chair Kathryn Ramey and produced by Emily Abi-Kheirs ’15.

Epstein said the production team is incredibly grateful to have received the grant to launch Overdue. A trailer is currently being made for the film, said Epstein.

“With this early support, we just wrapped our first two days of filming. Just a little intimidating that the first day of filming, and collaborating on set as a team, that we interviewed [Boston Mayor] Michelle Wu,” said Epstein. “This project is produced by my close friend Heang Rubin, a long-time activist in the struggle to bring back a library branch to Chinatown, and first time filmmaker.

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