May 15, 2024
NEWS RELEASE
Contact: Shawn Uhlman, Prosper Portland, 503-823-7994

The Events and Film Office at Prosper Portland, in partnership with Travel Portland, is proud to announce the recipients of the 2024 Post Production Grant. Funding will encourage the completion of local feature-length films and position local producers to build toward larger, more resourced productions. Past recipients of the Post-Production Grant have included “Nora” by Anna Campbell and Dawn Redstone Jones’ “Mother of Color,” the latter picked up by Amazon Prime Studios for worldwide streaming distribution.

Five films, selected from a pool of more than twenty applicants, will be awarded $8,000 each. Grant funds must be applied towards Portland based post-production services such as: sound, picture editing, color matching, color grading, closed caption, tech specs for distributors, VFX/animation, and music clearances using local post-production houses.

“Keeping post production in Portland is so important; so many times when people make movies here, they end up doing post in other places. Through this grant we will continue to build on the post production infrastructure that we have here in the city,” said Film Industry Project Manager Elyse Taylor Liburd. “I was really blown away by the caliber of the productions and the uniqueness of the storytelling. Every year that I think we can’t top the last, it just keeps on getting better.”

The projects were selected based on the commitment to diverse representation in their film and/or in production, the potential impact of the film on local talent and economy; influence of funding on the project and/or career of the applicant, and the potential impact of the film on external markets by way of bringing Portland’s vitality to the big screen.

Congratulations to all of the recipients of the 2024 Post Production Grant:

  • A Simple Machine – Nick Allander is a creative soul – a thoughtful, but indecisive, young man with an accounting job, a serious relationship, and a problem… he’s drowning in debt. When Nick’s mother, a hoarder in poor health, suddenly passes, he snaps, abandoning his career, leaving his apartment, and selling all his possessions to secretly squat in the garage of her foreclosed home.
  • 5 Weeks in Silverton – Nothing goes as planned when a group of trans and queer filmmakers set out to document the last 5 weeks of Stu Rasmussen’s life. The heartbreaking story of a trans teen at the beginning of her life and a trans elder at the end of theirs in small town Silverton, Oregon, and the wild things that happen when a crew of trans filmmakers show up to ask big questions on gender, freedom, life, and death.
  • Trash Baby – A coming-of-age drama that follows 12-year-old Stevie as she navigates growing up, getting out, and the art of finding beauty in the ugliest of places.
  • This is an Awesome Rock Show – In the summer of 2023, a group of adults with disabilities set out with a dream: to perform an epic rock concert at Revolution Hall in Portland, Oregon. THIS IS AN AWESOME ROCK SHOW is a feature-length documentary film about their incredible journey, from their first day of rehearsal all the way to the stage at Revolution Hall, where they performed “Stop Making Sense,” their interpretation of the Talking Heads classic album. The cast does not want to inspire you. They want to rock you.
  • Connection/Isolation – A feature documentary film witnessing the lives and experiences of trans people during the COVID-19 pandemic. In an airborne pandemic when separation, isolation, and self-sufficiency became the punishing norm, many trans people faced the COVID-19 era differently. G. Chesler’s new documentary feature presents eight portraits of trans, postgender, and genderqueer people sharing their experiences of cultivating, sustaining, and joining communities in this pandemic. Interlacing documentary portraits are reenactments with real folks reliving common COVID memories.

More information about these films is available on the Events & Film Office website.