Grant recipients for Chicken & Egg announced

Film fund and prodco Chicken & Egg Pictures has announced the grant recipients of its 2010 Spring Open Call in three grant categories. The I Believe In You grant winners are Always in Season from director Jacqueline Olive, about the effects that lynching continues to have on America today; Call Me Kuchu, directed by Malika Zouhali-Worrall and Katherine Fairfax Wright, about a small community of gay and transgender Ugandans; Chess Movie (w/t) from director Katie Dellamaggiore, which follows a small Brooklyn junior high school with the best chess program in the U.S.; Dara Kell and Christopher Nizza's Dear Mandela, about shack dwellers in the slums of Durban resisted evictions; El Jardin from Natalia Almada, about a cemetary at the heart of the drug industry in Mexico; Our School from Mona Nicoara and Miruna Coca-Cozma, about race relations told through the eyes of Roma children and Seeking Asian Female from director Debbie Lum, about unexpected modern love. The filmmakers that will receive the Liberty Grant are Melanie Shatzky and Brian M. Cassidy for their film The Patron Saints. The doc explores an assisted living facility. The Which Came First fund grants to female filmmakers who are tackling environmental subjects driven by characters. This year, Chicken & Egg teamed up with filmmaker/producer Marc Weiss to support three films in response to the BP oil spill. The three films are Rebecca Ferris's Isle de Jean Charles, about the Native Americans of the Isle who may need to move their long-standing traditions to higher ground because of coastal erosion, sea level rise and the Gulf oil spill; Leah Mahan's Turkey Creek, about the fight to protect a coastal Mississippi community, and Margaret Brown's Untitled Margaret Brown Oil Spill Doc, which is an investigation into the personal stories behind the BP oil spill.