We’re honored to announce that we have received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to support the outreach and distribution of Living Los Sures.
Through its grant-making to thousands of nonprofits each year, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) promotes opportunities for people in communities across America to experience the arts and exercise their creativity.
In the second major grant announcement of fiscal year 2015, the NEA will provide support to UnionDocs for the outreach and engagement campaign of the expansive multi-platform documentary Living Los Sures. The NEA will make 1,023 awards totaling $74.3 million nationwide in this funding round.
NEA Chairman Jane Chu said, “The NEA is committed to advancing learning, fueling creativity, and celebrating the arts in cities and towns across the United States. Funding these new projects like the one from UnionDocs represents an investment in both local communities and our nation’s creative vitality.”
“Support from the NEA will allow us to continue to pursue our mission of bringing exceptional documentary work to a variety of audiences,” said Christopher Allen, UnionDocs Founder and Executive Artistic Director. “Through Living Los Sures we have connected with the amazing community in Williamsburg’s Southside. We have been lucky to learn their stories, struggles and triumphs and we are very excited about taking these stories outside of Brooklyn to the world. We are very thankful to the NEA for supporting this stage of the project.”
UnionDocs has been engaged in the multi-platform, participatory documentary project Living Los Sures for the past five years. The project revolves around the longstanding Latino community in the Southside of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and was inspired by the 1984 film by Diego Echeverría Los Sures. The project consists of: a) The restored film Los Sures about the neighborhood in 1984, when it was one of the poorest in the country; b) A website consisting of an interactive doc feature called 89 Steps and a community platform called Shot by Shot, which uses the restored film as a prompt to gather local histories; and c) A collection of over 30 short documentaries created by the UnionDocs Collaborative Studio fellows. The project launched at the 2014 New York Film Festival at the Film Society of Lincoln Center for the 30th anniversary of the film Los Sures and will continue presentations through the country, including the upcoming theatrical release this summer.
To join the Twitter conversation about this announcement, please use #NEASpring2015. For more information on projects included in the NEA grant announcement, go to arts.gov
