Fiscal Spotlight: Reckoning with the Past & Reinventing the Future
Welcome to Fiscal Spotlight, a special monthly round up of projects—at all stages of production—working their way through Film Independent’s Fiscal Sponsorship pipeline. Enjoy!
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Institutions can be beautiful things. They bring people together, they support important causes, they are support systems for their members. One of the assets of an institution is its stability– knowledge gets passed down from generation to generation. But stability is a double-edged sword. It also means that you can be resistant to some much-needed change.
Flaws can be built into a long-standing enterprise, especially one that has lasted decades and centuries. Things can be proven incorrect later, manners and proprieties can change, and of course prejudices of another era can metastasize.
But for some people, that doesn’t mean that the institution should be given up on or thrown away. They want to change the system, but for something so established, that can be a tall task. The larger a ship is, the slower it is to change course.
The three nonfiction features in this month’s Fiscal Spotlight all deal with institutions and how to move them forward in one way or another. The films this month tackle the myth of the American West and the monuments that honor it in western states in Monumental, the ideals of a progressive church and how those ideals aren’t always lived up to in The 8thPrinciple, and a trailblazing dancer who wants to keep pushing one of the great dance companies forward in Shedding: A Dancer’s Journey of Self-Reinvention.
Keep reading to learn more, including how you can support these projects.
Monumental
Project type: Nonfiction Feature
Project status: Production
Director: Erika Bolstad
Producers: Jackie Weissman, Jen Tate
About the Project: After protesters upend five monuments in Portland in 2020, the community reckons with its symbols of westward expansion. The unfolding fate of the sculptures pits historic preservationists and the descendants of Oregon Trail settlers against artists, Indigenous activists, and others who view the monuments as relics of colonialism.
Meet the Filmmaker: Director Erika Bolstad is a journalist and filmmaker in Portland and the author of Windfall, a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. She spent a decade in Washington, D.C., covering politics and environmental issues for Climatewire and the McClatchy Washington Bureau. In 2008, she was a Pulitzer finalist for work at the Idaho Statesman. To Be Rich, her companion short documentary to Windfall, was supported by an environmental art grant from the Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation.
The 8th Principle
Project type: Nonfiction Feature
Project status: Production
Director: Sophia Uehara
Producer: Nicole Palermo
About the Project: Sophia Uehara, a mixed-race filmmaker and Unitarian Universalist, documents her congregation’s upheaval in adopting the 8th Principle, an anti-racist pledge. Interviewing various BIPOC UU leaders and activists across the United States, she explores the challenge of holding a mostly white religious community accountable to its ideals, exposing tensions between belief, allyship, and action.
Meet the Filmmaker: Sophia Uehara is a second-generation Japanese-American documentary director and production designer. With a career rooted in visual storytelling, Sophia brings a unique perspective to her work, drawing on her background in art direction to craft compelling narratives that explore identity, representation, and social change.
Raised by two classically trained visual artists, Sophia developed a fascination with the intersection of art, media, and education. As a production designer, she has designed award-winning features, commercials, and music videos including Our Son (dir. Bill Oliver), which premiered at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival, and If I Die in America (dir. Ward Kamel), which debuted at SXSW 2024. Commercial clients like Google, Lexus, Starbucks, and AT&T have also entrusted her with visually shaping their campaigns. She completed her education at Tisch School of the Arts.
Shedding: A Dancer’s Journey of Self-Reinvention
Project type: Nonfiction Feature
Project status: Production
Director: Jingqiu Guan
Producer: Selena Leoni
About the Project: Xin Ying, a Chinese immigrant and trailblazing principal dancer of the Martha Graham Dance Company, prepares to retire from her decade-long role at the pinnacle of her career while actively positioning herself in hopes of becoming the company’s next—and first Asian American—artistic director. Facing this turning point, she must navigate not only an uncertain future, but also the demands of motherhood and invisible social and cultural barriers faced by Asian immigrant women in the US.
Meet the Filmmaker: Originally from Chengdu, China, Jingqiu Guan is an independent filmmaker and choreographer based in Los Angeles. From the Chinese Theater in Hollywood to the National Performing Art Center in China, her dance films and documentaries have been screened in a number of screendance festivals and film festivals in various cities in the US, the UK, Norway, Spain, Austria, Mexico, mainland China, and Hong Kong. Her dance film Family Portrait won the 2020 Chinese Screendance Maker Award from Jumping Frames International Video Dance Festival in HK, Best Student Film Award from San Francisco Dance Film Festival and the Grand Jury Award from Chicago’s In Motion Dance Film Festival. Her documentary film Inside the Frame won the Best Editing Award for the documentary shorts category at Silver State Film Festival.
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